Impending

How to spell impending

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce impending

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does impending mean?

1. adjectiveAbout to happen very soon, especially something serious or unwelcome.

Impending in a sentence

• The dark clouds warned the hikers of an impending storm.

• News of the impending layoffs spread quickly through the office.

Where does impending come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb impendere, which combined the prefix in-, here meaning 'over' or 'upon', with pendere, meaning 'to hang'. The literal image was of something hanging over a person, poised and ready to drop, which is exactly why impending still carries a sense of menace rather than mere expectation. By the time it entered English in the late sixteenth century, it had settled into describing an event that looms close and is about to occur, usually an unwelcome one. The same pendere root hangs inside a whole family of English words, including 'pendant' (something that dangles), 'pending' (still hanging in the balance) and 'suspend' (to hang underneath). Remembering that the middle is 'pend', as in something hanging, helps fix the spelling and keeps it from drifting toward an 'a'.

How the word is built

• im- (variant of in-: over, upon)
• pend (from pendere: to hang)
• -ing (adjective/participle suffix)