impend

English

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɪmˈpɛnd/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛnd

Verb

impend (third-person singular simple present impends, present participle impending, simple past and past participle impended)

1. (obsolete) To hang or be suspended over (something); to overhang.
   • 1789, John Moore, Zeluco, Valancourt, published 2008, page 210:

     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.

   • 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 September 2015:

     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.

2. (intransitive, figurative) To hang over (someone) as a threat or danger.
3. (intransitive) To threaten to happen; to be about to happen, to be imminent.

   impending doom

4. (obsolete) To pay.

Translations

be about to happen

• Bulgarian: предстоя (bg) (predstoja), застрашавам (bg) (zastrašavam)
• German: bevorstehen (de), drohen (de), sich ankündigen
• Latin: imminere
• Russian: надвигаться (ru) impf (nadvigatʹsja)

Anagrams

• Mendip