impending
/ɪmˈpɛndɪŋ/adjective, noun, verb
impending is spelled I-M-P-E-N-D-I-N-G. The wrong spelling people search most is inpending: about 30 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 85 of all searches for the word. Impending is an adjective meaning “Approaching; drawing near; about to happen or expected to happen”.
How many letters and syllables are in impending?
| Letters | 9: I-M-P-E-N-D-I-N-G |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 3 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 3.4 times per million words; the 14,307th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, inpending, about 30 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).
How do you spell impending?
Impending is spelled I-M-P-E-N-D-I-N-G. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 86 of the searches for impending in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is impending?
Impending appears 3.4 times per million words in written English, the 14,307th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce impending?
- /ɪmˈpɛndɪŋ/
Impending has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Sapaa-impending.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of impending
- impendings plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does impending mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
adjective
- 1
Approaching; drawing near; about to happen or expected to happen.
I have no time right now because of an impending paper submission deadline.
noun
- 1
Something that impends or threatens; an expected event.
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 […]
verb
- 1
present participle and gerund of impend
The hurricane is impending.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Impending in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense about to happen:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | imminent |
| German | bevorstehend |
| Portuguese | iminente |
| Spanish | impendiente, impendedor |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does impending come from?
From impend + -ing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).