Impend

Impend is an English verb meaning to be about to occur or to threaten to happen; it conveys a sense of looming immediacy or foreboding. The term is often used to describe impending events or dangers that hang over a situation and are likely to occur soon. In contemporary prose, impend appears most frequently in formal, literary, or philosophical contexts, rather than in everyday speech.

Etymology and history trace impend to the Latin impendere, meaning “to hang over, threaten,” formed from in- “upon” plus pendere “to hang.” The word entered English in the early modern period and has retained a somewhat elevated tone. The related adjective impending is common in modern usage and covers many of the same ideas in a more accessible form.

Usage notes: Impend is typically used with abstract or tangible things that are imminent or looming, such as danger, disaster, or a crisis. The subject of the sentence is usually the impending event itself. Examples include: “A sense of foreboding impends over the city,” or “If policies aren’t changed, crisis and upheaval impend.” The present participle form, impending, is far more common today in both journalism and fiction, as in “impending doom” or “impending negotiations.” The verb remains relatively rare outside formal writing, where it contributes a precise, if archaic, sense of unavoidable approach.

See also: impending, loom, threaten, forebode. There are no widely recognized entities or organizations universally associated with the name Impend; in practice, the term is used primarily as a verb.