Other forms: threats
A threat is a warning that somebody will do harm, or the danger itself. Make a threat, an empty threat, a threat to public health.
The two senses matter: a threat can be something said — he made threats — or something that exists, like a threat to the environment. The prepositions differ slightly: a threat to a person or thing at risk, and a threat of the harmful outcome. Note under threat, meaning at risk, and threaten as the verb, which also has a weather sense: it is threatening rain. And an idle threat is one nobody expects to be carried out.
1nounthreatA warning that somebody will cause harm.
“The threats were reported to the police.”
2nouncauseSomething likely to cause harm.
“Flooding is the biggest threat to the whole village.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
threat is a warning or danger.
Old English threat meant a crowd, a press or an oppression, from a root meaning to push or squeeze. A threat was originally the pressure itself rather than the words, which is why a threat to something can still exist with nobody saying anything.
Proto-Indo-European
*trewd- — to squeeze, push, press
Proto-Germanic
*þrautaz
Old English
þrēat — crowd, swarm, troop, army, press; pressure, trouble, calamity, oppression, force, violence, threat
Middle English
threte
English, today
threat
From Middle English threte, thret, thrat, thræt, threat, from Old English þrēat (“crowd, swarm, troop, army, press; pressure, trouble, calamity, oppression, force, violence, threat”), from Proto-Germanic þrautaz, closely tied to Proto-Germanic þrautą (“displeasure, complaint, grievance, labour, toil”), from Proto-Indo-European trewd- (“to squeeze, push, press”). Cognate with Scots thret, threte, threit (“threat”), Middle High German drōz (“annoyance, disgust, horror, terror, fright”), Middle Low German drōt (“threat, menace, danger”), Faroese treyt (“struggle, labour, distress”), Icelandic þraut (“struggle, labour, distress”), be -, Bulgarian -, mk -, Russian -, and Ukrainian труд (“work, labour”), Czech trud (“effot, hard work”), Polish trud (“hard work”), Serbo-Croatian trȗd (“effort, hard work”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA