minatory

• miniatory (obsolete)

Borrowed from Middle French minatoire, from Late Latin minātōrius, from Latin minor, minārī (“to threaten, speak or act menacingly, hold out the threat of”, verbal derivative of minae, plural only, "threats, menaces, portents of evil") + -tōrius, deverbal adjective suffix originally forming derivatives from agent nouns ending in -tōr-, -tor; minae probably, if originally "projecting points, overhang," noun derivative of the verbal base *men- seen in ēminēre (“to stick out, protrude”), of uncertain origin.

Cognate to menace.

minatory (comparative more minatory, superlative most minatory)

1. Threatening, menacing.
   • 1837, Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution: A History  In Three Volumes">…], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Chapman and Hall, →OCLC, (please specify the book or page number):

     he Place de Greve, with its thirty thousand Regulars, its whole irregular Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau, is one minatory mass of clear or rusty steel

   • 1887, A Conan Doyle, “A Study in Scarlet”, in Beeton’s Christmas Annual, London; New York, N.Y.: Ward, Lock & Co., part I (Being a reprint from the reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D., ), chapter III (The Lauriston Gardens Mystery), page 17:

     Number 3, Lauriston Gardens wore an ill-omened and minatory look.

   • 1888, Henry James, The Reverberator, Macmillan and Co.:

     er father quietly addressed a few words, by letter, to George Flack. This communication was not of a minatory order; it expressed on the contrary the loose sociability which was the essence of Mr. Dosson's nature.

   • 1995, P. D. James, The Black Tower:

     She shook hands firmly with Adam Dalgleish and gave him a minatory glance as if welcoming a new patient from whom she expected trouble

   • 1997, Edward Gorey, The Haunted Tea-Cosy:

     In the cottage next to the post office Alma Crumble broke her wrist stirring batter, at which the Bug declared in a minatory tone that 'That was enough of that.'

• minacious, ominous, sinister

• Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day: The Word of the Day for November 24, 2007 is: minatory