Word.ws English Dictionary

pend

/pɛnd/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

pin pen merger/pɪnd/

pend verb: to hang down; to cause something to hang down.

Verb (1)

pend (third-person singular simple present pends, present participle pending, simple past and past participle pended)

  1. (obsolete) To hang down; to cause something to hang down
  2. (Scotland, obsolete) To arch over (something); to vault.
  3. (obsolete) To hang in reliance on; to depend (on or upon); to be contingent on.
    • pending upon certain powerful motives1832, [Isaac Taylor], Saturday Evening. […], London: Holdsworth and Ball, →OCLC

Noun (1)

pend (plural pends)

  1. (Scotland) An archway; especially, a vaulted passageway leading through a tenement-style building from the main street, giving access to the rear of the building or an internal courtyard.
    Synonyms:
    alley

Verb (2)

pend (third-person singular simple present pends, present participle pending, simple past and past participle pended)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To pen; to confine.
    • soche frowarde creatures as many women are, ought rather to be pended vp in a cage of iron1564, Nicholas Udall, Apophthegms, translation of original by Erasmus

Verb (3)

pend (third-person singular simple present pends, present participle pending, simple past and past participle pended)

  1. (transitive) To consider pending; to delay or postpone (something).
    • The latest list of detainees would be pended and they would be allowed to return to their homes on a temporary basis.1982, Lawrence Durrell, Constance, Faber & Faber, published 2004, page 817

Noun (2)

pend (uncountable)

  1. (India) oil cake

Synonyms of pend

Forms of pend

Verb
third-person singular presentpends
present participlepending
past participlepended
pastpended
Noun
pluralpends

Origin of pend

Borrowed from Middle French pendre (“to hang”), from Late Latin pendĕre, from Latin pendēre.

Compare pen (“to shut in”).

Back-formation from pending.

Phrases with pend

Words that rhyme with pend

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about pend

What does pend mean?
Pend means to hang down; to cause something to hang down.
What part of speech is pend?
Pend can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce pend?
Pend is pronounced /pɛnd/ (UK).
What is the past tense of pend?
The past tense of pend is pended.

Words near pend in the dictionary

  1. penconazole
  2. Pencourt
  3. Pencoyd
  4. pencraft
  5. pencycuron
  6. pend
  7. Pend d'Oreille
  8. Pend d'Oreilles
  9. Pend Oreille County
  10. pendant
  11. pendant light

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pend (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)-Vealhurl-pend.wav.

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