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Producing or threatening sorrow, distress, injury, or calamity; unpropitious; calamitous; as, evil tidings; evil arrows; evil days. Because he hath brought up an evil name upon a virgin of Israel. Deut. xxii. 19. The owl shrieked at thy birth -- an evil sign. Shak. Evil news rides post, while good news baits. Milton. E…

run in dept by getting goods made up in a way unsuitable for the use of others, and then threatening not to take them except on credit. [R.] Goldsmith.

To manifest displeasure or disapprobation; to look with disfavor or threateningly; to lower; as, polite society frowns upon rudeness. The sky doth frown and lower upon our army. Shak.

The deep, threatening sound made by a surly dog; a grumbling sound.

To hover; to impend; to appear threateningly; -- usually with over; as, evils hang over the country.

To hang about; to move to and fro near a place, threateningly, watchfully, or irresolutely. Agricola having sent his navy to hover on the coast. Milton. Hovering o'er the paper with her quill. Shak.

To make a threatening sound, like the clash of arms; to make a sound as of confused clashing or confusion; to resound. The noise of battle hurtled in the air. Shak. The earthquake sound Hurtling 'death the solid ground. Mrs. Browning.

Having a bad look; threatening; ugly. See Note under Ill, adv.

The condition or quality of being imminent; a threatening, as of something about to happen. The imminence of any danger or distress. Fuller.

Threatening to occur immediately; near at hand; impending; -- said especially of misfortune or peril. "In danger imminent." Spenser.

Impending; threatening. Impendent horrors, threatening hideous fall. Milton.

Hanging over; overhanging; suspended so as to menace; imminet; threatening. An impending brow. Hawthorne. And nodding Ilion waits th' impending fall. Pope.

, to look at a matter without prejudice. -- To look black, to frown; to scowl; to have a threatening appearance. The bishops thereat repined, and looked black. Holinshed. -- To look down on or upon, to treat with indifference or contempt; to regard as an inferior; to despise. -- To look for. (a) To expect; as, to loo…

To be dark, gloomy, and threatening, as clouds; to be covered with dark and threatening clouds, as the sky; to show threatening signs of approach, as a tempest. All the clouds that lowered upon our house. Shak.

Dark and threatening; gloomy; sullen; as, lowering clouds or sky.

In a lowering manner; with cloudiness or threatening gloom.

Tending to produce death; threatening a fatal issue; virulent; as, malignant diphtheria. Malignant pustule (Med.), a very contagious disease, transmitted to man from animals, characterized by the formation, at the point of reception of the virus, of a vesicle or pustule which first enlarges and then breaks down into an…

The show of an intention to inflict evil; a threat or threatening; indication of a probable evil or catastrophe to come. His (the pope's) commands, his rebukes, his menaces. Milman. The dark menace of the distant war. Dryden.

In a threatening manner.

Threatening; menacing. [R.]