Dictionary

impend en · VERB

Pronunciation

• /ɪmˈpɛnd/
• (Southern-England) audio

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin impendere (“to hang over, to weigh out”), 1590s.

Meanings

1. (obsolete) To hang or be suspended over (something); to overhang.
   • The Earl had often heard of a rich citizen […] and the peculiar charm of a little snug rotunda which he had just finished on the verge of his ground, and which impended the great London road. 1789, John Moore, Zeluco, Valancourt, published 2008, page 210:
   • when a thing really impends over another, e.g. when one stands at a fountain (עַל־עֵין), over which one really leans When a thing really impends over another, e.g. when one stands at a fountain (עַל־עֵין), over which one really leans. 1857, Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, “עַל (Strong's H5921) definition (A)(3)(a)”, in Gesenius' Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon, London: Samuel Bagster and Sons, retrieved 27 Sep 2015:
2. (figuratively, intransitive) To hang over (someone) as a threat or danger.
3. (intransitive) To threaten to happen; to be about to happen, to be imminent.
   • I, the mother of the only surnamed Glendinning, I feel now as though I had borne the last of a swiftly to be extinguished race. For swiftly to be extinguished is that race, whose only heir but so much as impends upon a deed of shame. 1852, Herman Melville, Pierre; or The Ambiguities:
   • impending doom
   • Although much is seriously wrong with the city, no disaster impends 1974, Edward C. Banfield, The Unheavenly City Revisited:
4. (obsolete) To pay.

Forms

Translations (10)

de sich ankündigen (be about to happen) · bg застрашавам (be about to happen) · ru надвигаться (be about to happen) · es impender (be about to happen) · la imminere (be about to happen) · de bevorstehen (be about to happen) · cs hrozit (be about to happen) · de drohen (be about to happen) · bg предстоя (be about to happen) · es inminer (be about to happen)