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

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

Overhang, ō-vėr-hang′, v.t. to hang over: to project over: to impend: to overlade with ornamentation.—v.i. to hang over.—n.

From Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (part 3 of 4: N-R) by Various

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.