threatened

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of threaten.

   The company threatened legal action against its former supplier.

   Several coastal towns were threatened by the rising floodwaters.

   Note

   One spelling does double duty: the plain past (the company threatened action) and the participle that follows have or be (had threatened, were threatened by floods). Every meaning of threaten carries over, from making threats to portending trouble or coming close to a record. The same spelling also works as an adjective, which, unlike the verb, takes more and most, as in the feeling of insecurity.

2. 2
   adjective

   Feeling insecure or vulnerable.

   Like feeling cornered in a room with no clear way out.

   Many longtime employees felt threatened by the arrival of automation.

   He grew defensive and threatened whenever his authority was questioned.

   Similarinsecure, vulnerable, intimidated, uneasy

   Oppositesecure, confident, safe, comfortable

3. 3
   adjective

   Of a plant or animal species, at risk of soon becoming endangered.

   Like a warning light that comes on before the engine actually fails.

   The spotted owl was listed as threatened after decades of habitat loss.

   Conservationists drafted a recovery plan for several threatened plant species.

   Similarvulnerable, imperiled

   Oppositesecure, safe

   Note

   A conservation term for a precise rung on the ladder of risk: threatened sits one step short of endangered, for a species or population expected to slide there if nothing changes. In IUCN usage it is broader, an umbrella over vulnerable, endangered and critically endangered. Keep it apart from the threatened closure of branch lines in H. C. Casserley's 1952 Railway Magazine piece, where the closure is the looming danger, not the thing at risk.

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