impend
verb/ɪmˈpɛnd/
Etymology Borrowed from Latin impendere (“to hang over, to weigh out”), 1590s.
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 To hang over (someone) as a threat or danger.
3
To threaten to happen; to be about to happen, to be imminent.
- impending doom
- 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:
1 more example
- Although much is seriously wrong with the city, no disaster impends1974, Edward C. Banfield, The Unheavenly City Revisited:
4
Obsolete To pay.