Verb

(en verb)

to impend; to threaten or hang over.

The clouds loomed over the mountains.

* {{quote-news

, year=2011 , date=August 7 , author=Chris Bevan , title=Man City 2 - 3 Man Utd , work=BBC Sport citation , page= , passage=With no extra-time to be played and penalties looming , the Portuguese winger pounced on some hesitant City defending to run on to a Wayne Rooney clearance, round Joe Hart and slot home.}}

To rise and to be eminent; to be elevated or ennobled, in a moral sense.

* J. M. Mason

On no occasion does he [Paul] loom so high, and shine so gloriously, as in the context.

Verb

(en verb)

(Scotland, obsolete) To sleep lightly, to doze, to nod; to be half-asleep.

*

* Jane Ermina Locke, "Elia", in The Recalled: In Voices of the Past, and Poems of the Ideal , James Munroe and Company (1854), page 193:

To his castle’s portal, / At the morning gloaming, / Bore they all the mortal / From the battle’s foaming, / Of the white bannered warrior knight, / Cold in his armor slooming !

* 1900 , Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr, The Maid of Maiden lane , Dodd, Mead and Company, page 181:

Then the doctor was slooming and nodding, and waking up and saying a word or two, and relapsing again into semi-unconsciousness.

* 1936 , Esmond Quinterley, Ushering Interlude , The Fortune Press, page 66:

The afternoon sun painted amber patterns on the Turkey red hearthrug: the only splash of colour in the dun room. Potter sloomed in the arms of the chair.

* 2001 , Gemma O'Connor, Walking on Water , ^{][http://www.amazon.com/Walking-Water-Gemma-OConnor/dp/0515135976} Berkley Publishing Group (2003), ISBN 978-0-515-13597-8, page 205:

He lay slooming half-asleep, half-awake, thinking about Tuesday afternoon.

(of plants or soil) To soften or rot with damp.

* unidentified young farmer, letter to his father, printed in Edinburgh Farmers’ Magazine'' 1807, reprinted in ''The Farmer’s Register , Volume 7, Number 9 (1839 September 30), page 540:

He adds, that one hundred bolls, or fifty quarters of wheat may be thrashed in a day of eight hours, unless the grain has been sloomed or mildewed;

* 1824 August, “Remarks on Captian Napier's Essay on Store-Farming”, in The Farmer’s Magazine , Volume XXV, Archibald Constable and Company (publishers), page 329:

no other spot over their whole pastured offered as much verdure at this time as these seemingly sloomed places.

* Alexander J. Main, “Experiments with Special Manures”, in Transactions of the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland , W. Blackwood & Sons (1855), page 17:

It must be explained, however, that in the latter case the “slooming ” of the crop had an injurious effect on its yield;