impend
Americanverb (used without object)
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impends,
present (3rd person singular)
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impended,
past participle, past
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impending
present participle
-
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
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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impendsimple
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impendssimple
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have impendedperfect
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has impendedperfect
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am impendingprogressive
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are impendingprogressive
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is impendingprogressive
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have been impendingperfect progressive
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has been impendingperfect progressive
Past
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impendedsimple
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had impendedperfect
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was impendingprogressive
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were impendingprogressive
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had been impendingperfect progressive
Future
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."
Vocabulary lists containing impend
Latin Love, Vol III: pendere
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"The Pit and the Pendulum" by Edgar Allan Poe
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pend, pens, List 2
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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.
See Examples For:
“Decline and disaster impend, but my thoughts don’t linger there.”
From Seattle Times ● May 21, 2017
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
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
We crossed this beautiful river at Bellows Falls, where a neat and thriving village has its seat among craggy mountains, which, at a little distance, seem to impend over it.
From Letters of a Traveller Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America by William Cullen Bryant
The strike and the lockout become potential, but they impend as possibilities and do their work.
From Essentials of Economic Theory As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy by John Bates Clark
Especially after Disher and Givens marry in Georgia, and a baby of likely mixed race impends, the musical pushes too hard toward tragedy, winding up well short at melodrama.
From New York Times ● Feb. 15, 2022
And it being the middle of May mosquito season impends.
From US News ● May 13, 2016
Peril impends when a note comes announcing that her visit must be put off.
From New York Times ● Mar. 18, 2011
Upon such grounds as these impends a suit before whose complications the most intrepid jurists were struck dumb.
From Time Magazine Archive
No thought of morrow that impends Comes in between me and my friends.
From Canada, My Land and Other Compositions in Verse by W. M. MacKeracher
Talks important to Britain impended with the arrival of U.S.
From Time Magazine Archive
Other German defeats in other areas impended: > At Krivoi Rog, where the Red Army was closing in on the last great Nazi hedgehog in the Dnieper loop.
From Time Magazine Archive
No title impended; it was primarily an affair of honor between two of the keenest match-playy golfers that ever cut a divot.
From Time Magazine Archive
Britons wondered whether a Liberal showdown impended at last.
From Time Magazine Archive
After the departure of the detectives, the composure that had impressed Nye faltered; a familiar despair impended.
From "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote
Two years ago, Leopold Aschenbrenner made bold predictions about the impending arrival of superintelligence in a 165-page manifesto called “Situational Awareness.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 26, 2026
His impending arrival means Martinez could now move to Juventus with the Old Lady having held an interest in the 33-year-old this summer.
From BBC ● Aug. 16, 2026
He told me he had gotten “at least 100 calls” since the local news item announcing the impending closure.
From Slate ● Aug. 14, 2026
Oman is facing an impending environmental catastrophe as an alleged Russian shadow fleet tanker leaks oil across hundreds of square kilometres near a nature reserve, NGOs warn.
From Barron's ● Aug. 6, 2026
The two diagonals of the words “tres important” and “faire suivre” meet on the envelope at a point, an arrowhead—giving an impression of flight, purpose, urgency—or an impending wound.
From "Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers" by Deborah Heiligman
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.
