threaten.
To make a threat against someone; to use threats.
Meaning & usage
To make a threat against someone; to use threats.
He threatened me with a knife.
To menace, or be dangerous.
The rocks threatened the ship's survival.
To portend, or give a warning of.
The black clouds threatened heavy rain.
To call into question the validity of (a belief, idea, or viewpoint); to challenge.
The new information threatened our original hypothesis.
To be close to equaling or surpassing (a record, etc.); to challenge.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English thretenen, from Old English þrēatnian (“to urge, force, compel”), equivalent to threat + -en.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.