impend
Americanverb (used without object)
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to be imminent; be about to happen.
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to threaten or menace.
He felt that danger impended.
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Archaic. to hang or be suspended; overhang (usually followed byover ).
verb
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(esp of something threatening) to be about to happen; be imminent
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rare (foll by over) to be suspended; hang
Other Word Forms
- impendence noun
- superimpend verb (used without object)
Etymology
Origin of impend
First recorded in 1580–90, impend is from the Latin word impendēre to hang over, threaten. See im- 1, pend
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
“Decline and disaster impend, but my thoughts don’t linger there.”
From Seattle Times • May 21, 2017
An international incident seemed to impend when the Rumanian ghouls incautiously admitted that they had pulled the corpse this way and that, in an effort to find contraband goods in the coffin.
From Time Magazine Archive
But "she was cognizant of the crises that impend in all human breasts" and considered that "innocent intimacy was preferable to unacknowledged proximity."
From Time Magazine Archive
The walls of the castellated abbey impend, and jut out in bold decided masses; and the whole is crowned by the florid choir of the abbey church.
From Architectural Antiquities of Normandy by Cotman, John Sell
Yet if such odium did inevitably impend above me, I have ever been of this mind, that I regard that hatred which is earned by honorable duty not as reproach, but glory!
From The Roman Traitor, Vol. 2 by Herbert, Henry William
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
