impend

American  

[im-pend] / ɪmˈpɛnd /

verb (used without object)

1. to be imminent; be about to happen.

2. to threaten or menace.

   He felt that danger impended.

3. Archaic. to hang or be suspended; overhang (usually followed byover ).

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impend British  

/ ɪmˈpɛnd /

verb

1. (esp of something threatening) to be about to happen; be imminent

2. rare (foll by over) to be suspended; hang

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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

Explanation

When things impend, they are just about to happen. As you're heading into a haunted house, you might have the feeling that spooky noises and lurching monsters impend. While you're more likely to see the adjective form of this word, impending, used to describe something that's looming or coming up in the future, you can also use the verb impend when something is approaching or developing. You could say, for example, that winter impends when the leaves have all fallen off the trees and the temperature has dropped. The Latin root is impendere, "hang over or be imminent," from pendere, or "hang."

Example Sentences

“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

While the members were thus being torn away, destruction seemed to impend at the heart.

From The Loyalists of Massachusetts And the Other Side of the American Revolution by Stark, James H.

Now the traveller descends to the beach, his only road; the mountains are far inland, or dip their broad bases in the sea-foam, or impend in fearful masses over his head.

From The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 Volume 23, Number 2 by Various