Library / English Dictionary

IMPEND

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Be imminent or about to happen

Example:

Changes are impending

Classified under:

Verbs of being, having, spatial relations

Hypernyms (to "impend" is one way to...):

be (have the quality of being; (copula, used with an adjective or a predicate noun))

Sentence frame:

Something ----s

Derivation:

impendence; impendency (the state of being imminent and liable to happen soon)

Credits

 Context examples: 

It is the characteristic sign of impending birth and is caused by increased pressure in the region.

(Bulging Perineum, NCI Thesaurus)

Besides the obvious positive reading promising food, I found multiple negative ones which warn of the impending catastrophe.

(‘Trickster god’ used fake news in Babylonian Noah story, University of Cambridge)

Located in the Peruvian Andes, Ubinas has shown signs of an impending eruption since the mid-2013, highlighted by the appearance of a fresh lava dome in March 2014.

(Fresh lava arrives at Ubinas volcano, NASA)

But Jo hated 'philandering', and wouldn't allow it, always having a joke or a smile ready at the least sign of impending danger.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

A condition due to lack of oxygen in respired air, resulting in impending or actual cessation of life.

(Asphyxia, Food and Drug Administration)

A vague feeling of impending misfortune impressed me.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Panic attacks begin with intense apprehension, fear or terror and, often, a feeling of impending doom.

(Panic Disorder, NLM, Medical Subject Headings)

Once a begging friar came limping along in a brown habit, imploring in a most dolorous voice to give him a single groat to buy bread wherewith to save himself from impending death.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Under the strain of this continually impending doom and by the sleeplessness to which I now condemned myself, ay, even beyond what I had thought possible to man, I became, in my own person, a creature eaten up and emptied by fever, languidly weak both in body and mind, and solely occupied by one thought: the horror of my other self.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

They are so perpetually alarmed with the apprehensions of these, and the like impending dangers, that they can neither sleep quietly in their beds, nor have any relish for the common pleasures and amusements of life.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)