1. To come into view as a massive, distorted, or indistinct image: "I faced the icons that loomed through the veil of incense"(Fergus M. Bordewich). See Synonyms at appear.
2. To appear to the mind in a magnified and threatening form: "Stalin looms over the whole human tragedy of 1930-1933"(Robert Conquest).
3. To seem imminent; impend: Revolution loomed but the aristocrats paid no heed.
n.
A distorted, threatening appearance of something, as through fog or darkness.
[Perhaps of Scandinavian origin.]
loom 2
(lo͞om)
n.
An apparatus for making thread or yarn into cloth by weaving strands together at right angles.
tr.v.loomed, loom·ing, looms
To weave (a tapestry, for example) on a loom.
[Middle English lome, from Old English gelōma, tool : ge-, collective pref.; see yclept + -lōma, tool (as in handlōman, tools).]
Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy.
THE LOOMING TOWER (BBC2, 9.30pm) The Looming Tower traces the rising threat of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida in the late '90s and how a rivalry between the FBI and CIA during the time period may have inadvertently set the path for the attacks of 9/11.
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