Word of the Day:
threaten
What It Means
To make a threat against someone; to use threats.
To portend, or give a warning of.
The new information threatened our original hypothesis.
Threaten in Context
“The player quickly surmised that things weren't kosher and the suddenly wiser ballplayer threatened the world record for the fifty-yard dash as he sought safety. As Reynolds dived into the van, Dietz and the other players rolled with laughter.”
Did You Know?
From Middle English thretenen, from Old English þrēatnian (“to urge, force, compel”), equivalent to threat + -en.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: threaten (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “threaten.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/threaten. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
