Word.ws English Dictionary

hang over

hang over verb: to be threatening, to be imminent.

Verb

hang over (third-person singular simple present hangs over, present participle hanging over, simple past and past participle hung over)

  1. (transitive) To be threatening, to be imminent.
    • A shadow of doubt hung over my academic future.
    • Now, cramped and outclassed as Euston has become, rebuilding hangs over it with an awful inevitability.1941 August, C. Hamilton Ellis, “The English Station”, in Railway Magazine, page 358
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see hang, over.
    • Peter, Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill, of Imber, dressed all in black as usual, sits at the head of the table. A crumpled and well-used orange vest hangs over the back of his chair.2025 February 19, Paul Clifton, “I am absolutely committed to reforming the railway”, in RAIL, number 1029, page 39

Forms of hang over

third-person singular presenthangs over
present participlehanging over
past participlehung over
pasthung over

Questions about hang over

What does hang over mean?
Hang over means to be threatening, to be imminent.
What part of speech is hang over?
Hang over is a verb.
What is the past tense of hang over?
The past tense of hang over is hung over.

Words near hang over in the dictionary

  1. hang onto
  2. hang onto your hat
  3. hang out
  4. hang out one's shingle
  5. hang out to dry
  6. hang over
  7. hang over someone's head
  8. hang paper
  9. hang round
  10. hang ten
  11. hang tens

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hang over (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “hang over.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hang_over. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.