looming

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of loom.

   A massive iceberg sat looming on the horizon as the ship drew nearer.

   With exams looming, the students spent every evening in the library.

   Note

   Built on an intransitive verb, it never takes a direct object. Things are looming, looming over a town or looming ahead, but nothing looms anything. Its figurative side, an event about to arrive, does much of the work, especially before a noun: a looming deadline, looming exams. There it reads almost as an adjective. Used as the head of a noun phrase, it becomes the noun of dim, towering appearance instead.

2. 2
   noun

   Gerund of loom.

   The slow looming of the storm front filled the entire sky by noon.

   Sailors told stories about the eerie looming of distant ships above the horizon.

   Note

   A full noun, not only a verb in disguise: it takes a plural, loomings, and accepts articles and adjectives. Thomas Carlyle in 1850 writes of "indistinct loomings of a sordid chaos," keeping the core idea of something glimpsed dimly and out of proportion. Despite the shared spelling, it has nothing to do with the weaver's loom. It is built on the verb of towering and appearing indistinctly.

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