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
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.
“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
I am too deeply distressed by the evils that afflict, or that may seem to impend over my people, not to have sought a means to prevent them.
From Louis Philippe Makers of History Series by Abbott, John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot)
One speaks upon occasion, giving him warning when grave troubles impend.
From The Woodlands Orchids by Boyle, Frederick
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.
