minatory
adjUK /ˈmɪn.ə.tɔːɹ.iː/ · CA, US, SC /ˈmɪn.ə.toɹ.i/
Etymology Borrowed from Middle French minatoire, from Late Latin minātōrius. Compare menace.
1
Threatening, menacing.
- […]the Place de Grève, with its thirty thousand Regulars, its whole irregular Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau, is one minatory mass of clear or rusty steel;[…]1837, Thomas Carlyle, “Usher Maillard”, in The French Revolution: A History […], volume I (The Bastille), London: Chapman and Hall, →OCLC, book VII (The Insurrection of Women), page 259:
- Number 3, Lauriston Gardens wore an ill-omened and minatory look.1887, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “A Study in Scarlet”, in Beeton’s Christmas Annual, London; New York, N.Y.: Ward, Lock & Co., part I (Being a reprint from the reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D., […]), chapter III (The Lauriston Gardens Mystery), page 17:
3 more examples
- […]her father quietly addressed a few words, by letter, to George Flack. This communication was not of a minatory order; it expressed on the contrary the loose sociability which was the essence of Mr. Dosson's nature.1888, Henry James, chapter 13, in The Reverberator, Macmillan and Co.:
- She shook hands firmly with Dalgliesh and gave him a minatory glance as if welcoming a new patient from whom she expected trouble.1975, P. D. James, The Black Tower (Adam Dalgliesh; 5), New York: Faber & Faber, →ISBN, page 49:
- In the cottage next to the post office Alma Crumble broke her wrist stirring batter, at which the Bug declared in a minatory tone that ‘That was enough of that.’1997 December 21, Edward Gorey, The Haunted Tea-Cosy: A Dispirited and Distasteful Diversion for Christmas, New York; San Diego; London: Harcourt Brace & Company, published 1997, →ISBN:
- Derived terms
- minatorily