Impending means coming closer and usually unwelcome. Impending doom, an impending deadline, impending storm.
It is almost always attached to something bad — impending doom is the fixed phrase — and it carries the sense of something hanging over you. That is literal in the origin: the Latin means hanging over, from pendere, so an impending thing is suspended above your head. Note pending, its milder relative.
1adjectiveimpendingComing closer and usually unwelcome.
“Dark clouds warned of the impending storm.”
impending is a quality of nearness.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)pend-
Latin
impendere — to hang over, to weigh out
English
impend
English, today
impending
From impend + -ing. impend Borrowed from Latin impendere (“to hang over, to weigh out”), 1590s.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA