threatening

Etymology

From threaten + -ing.

verb

1. present participle and gerund of threaten

adj

1. Presenting a threat, posing a likely risk of harm.
   Never turn your back to someone who is displaying threatening behavior.
2. Making threats, making statements about a willingness to cause harm.

noun

1. An act of threatening; a threat.
   The butcher’s boy—a fierce and beefy youth, who openly defied the dog, and waved him off with hurlings of his basket and threatenings of his feet, accompanied by growls of “Git out, yer beast!”—now entered silently; Edmund Yates (1884), “A Dickens Chapter”, in Edmund Yates: His Recollections and Experiences, volume II, London: Richard Bentley and Son, page 111: “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.” 30 January 1864, [authorship claimed by Edmund Yates], “Pincher Astray”, in Charles Dickens, editor, All The Year Round. A Weekly Journal., volume X, number 249, London: Chapman and Hall, page 539, column 2