impending
/ɪmˈpɛndɪŋ/
impending adjective: approaching; drawing near; about to happen or expected to happen. Also the present participle and gerund of impend.
Adjective
impending (not comparable)
- Approaching; drawing near; about to happen or expected to happen.
- I have no time right now because of an impending paper submission deadline.
- "Keep off Conductor Rails" said red-painted notices at the platform ends, for third-rails were laid in many places even where electric trains never normally ran, and there had been many rumours of impending electrification of the Wirral, as a natural extension of the Mersey system, a quarter of a...1954 March, W. A. Tuplin, “Recollections of the Wirral Railway”, in Railway Magazine, page 167
- Synonyms:
- imminent, in the offing, proximate, around the corner, at hand, forthcoming, impendent, in the wind, instant, on the boil
Noun
impending (plural impendings)
- Something that impends or threatens; an expected event.
- Speed of locomotion and staying power in horse and others; the sense of smell in dog and in most other creatures (a far subtler and more analytical faculty than is man's mere perception of odour). Even an uncanny supra-natural sense of natural impendings, catastrophe, earthquake and flood, lacking...1934, Arabella Kenealy, The Human Gyroscope
- Although I do think about death quite regularly, my intense fear of lesser impendings has taught me that the only way I will survive it is to remain objective […]1994, Steve Garvey, quoted in 2000, Nicholas Barnes, Ainin H. Garvey, The Lost Writings of Steve Garvey (page 23)
Also used as
impending is also the present participle and gerund of impend.
impending meaning in Sanskrit and Persian
impending in Sanskrit
- about to happen
- भविष्य bhaviṣya
impending in Persian
- about to happen
- قریبالوقوع qarib-olvoqu'
Examples of impending in a sentence
- Strangelove type of situation when they discover mankind’s impending doom, and team up with Dr.2021 December 7, Jesse Hassenger, “Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence cope with disaster in the despairing satire Don’t Look Up”, in...
- Even an uncanny supra-natural sense of natural impendings, catastrophe, earthquake and flood, lacking in man, is found in simpler creatures.1934, Arabella Kenealy, The Human Gyroscope:
Synonyms of impending
- imminent
- in the offing
- proximate
- around the corner
- at hand
- forthcoming
- impendent
- in the wind
- on the boil
- pending
Antonyms
Forms of impending
| plural | impendings |
|---|
Origin of impending
From impend + -ing.
Words formed from impending
Words that rhyme with impending
- descending
- ascending
- attending
- ending
- pending
- happy ending
- spending
- unbending
- unpretending
- antispending
- blending
- condescending
15 more rhymesFewer rhymes
Questions about impending
- What does impending mean?
- Impending means approaching; drawing near; about to happen or expected to happen.
- What is impending in Sanskrit?
- Impending in Sanskrit is भविष्य (bhaviṣya). See Impending meaning in Sanskrit.
- How do you use impending in a sentence?
- Strangelove type of situation when they discover mankind’s impending doom, and team up with Dr.
- What part of speech is impending?
- Impending can be an adjective or a noun.
- How do you pronounce impending?
- Impending is pronounced /ɪmˈpɛndɪŋ/.
Words near impending in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: impending (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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Sapaa-impending.wav.
Cite this entry: “impending.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/impending. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.