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Allin

imminent

adjectiveattested in dialogue

  • //ˈɪmɪnənt//
  • /[ˈɪmɪnənt]/
  • //ˈɪmənənt//
  • /[ˈɪmənənt]/

About to happen, occur, or take place very soon, especially of something which won't last long.

adjective

  1. 1

    About to happen, occur, or take place very soon, especially of something which won't last long.

    To courageous, self-reliant men, with confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning applied through the processes of popular government, no danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion.

    The Second World War was reaching fever pitch, with the entire Allied effort in top gear for the imminent invasion of Europe, while later that month buzz bombs would start falling on London.

    “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

Etymology

From the present participle of Latin imminēre (“to overhang”), from mineō ("to project, overhang"), related to minae (English menace) and mons (English mount). Compare with eminent.

Forms

comparative
more imminent
superlative
most imminent
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).