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Welcome to today’s HowtodoIELTS vocabulary post. Today’s word is Impending /ɪmˈpɛndɪŋ/.

It is a negative adjective that means something bad is about to happen. It’s negative because it never means something good. An impending trip is not a trip you are looking forward to – it’s one you are afraid of for some reason.

The most common collocations for impending are impending doom, impending death, impending disaster, impending crisis, impending changes, impending decision, and impending event. For most of you, the IELTS test is an impending event.

Check out some more collocations here.

An example sentence with impending is ‘The impending crisis is avoidable if we take measures to prevent it.’

It is only used as an adjective, never really as a verb or noun and, like adjectives generally, it comes before a noun (impending disaster).

The stress is on the second syllable ‘pen.’

Here is the example reading sentence I took from an IELTS reading: In recent years we have all been exposed to dire media reports concerning the impending demise of global coal and oil reserves.

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Now it’s your turn! Put your answers in the comments.

Is there an impending event coming up in your life?