threatening

Presenting a threat, posing a likely risk of harm.

Adjective

  1. Presenting a threat, posing a likely risk of harm.
    • Never turn your back to someone who is displaying threatening behavior.
    • Fie, fie, vnknit that thretaning vnkinde brovv, / And dart not ſcornefull glances from thoſe eies, / To vvound thy Lord, thy King, thy Gouernour. - c. 1590–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Taming of the...
  2. Making threats, making statements about a willingness to cause harm.

Origin

From Middle English thretenyng, þreteninde, equivalent to threaten + -ing.

Forms

more threatening most threatening threatning

Synonyms

minacious menacing baleful threatensome threatful ominous

Hypernyms

frightening

Derived

life-threatening nonthreatening non-threatening threateningly threateningness unthreatening

Noun

  1. An act of threatening; a threat.
    • And nowe lorde beholde their threatenyngꝭ / and graunte vnto thy ſervauntꝭ wyth all confydence to ſpeake thy worde. - 1526, [William Tyndale, transl.], The Newe Testamẽt […] (Tyndale Bible), [Worms, Germany: Peter...
    • In Mr. J. C. Hotten’s Life, and in Mr. A. W. Ward’s admirable monograph in the “English Men of Letters” Series, a paper of mine called “Pincher Astray” is attributed to Dickens. - Edmund Yates (1884), “A Dickens...

Origin

From Middle English thretenyng, thretnynge, þretnynge, equivalent to threaten + -ing.

Forms

threatenings threatning

Verb

  1. present participle and gerund of threaten

Forms

threatning