Pylimitics

A weaver might reasonably accept a commission to create a bit of cloth for someone by a certain date. As the date approached, the weaver might sit at the loom with the deadline looming. But when a weaver is using a loom without any deadline in sight, that’s not called looming. Instead, it’s weaving.  

What’s going on here is that there are two completely different words in English that are spelled and pronounced “loom.” Nowadays they’re not difficult to keep straight because one is a noun and the other a verb. “Loom” the noun is a machine used for weaving — at least that’s what it means today. In the past “loom” has been used to mean some other things, including a boat and a bucket. Also in the past, once the weaving machine had been invented in the 1400s, this version of “loom” was also used as a verb, so back then a weaver was “looming” at the loom. But that usage is obsolete. This “loom” comes from Old English, specifically from the word “geloma,” which meant any tool or implement. It’s also the predecessor of “heirloom” — that word appeared in the 1400s and meant any tool that could be inherited. After a couple of centuries the meaning broadened to the way we use “heirloom” today to mean any inherited object, tool or not. 

The other “loom” has nothing to do with tools at all. It means to come into view, or to appear as huge and threatening, or to seem to be impending. For example ,a ship can loom out of the fog, the threat of nuclear war can loom, or a deadline can loom. This word “loom” isn’t as old as the other one; it didn’t appear in English until the 1600s and was originally a nautical term that meant the rocking of a boat or the approach of another boat (or the shore, or whatever else you might approach in your vessel). The origin of the verb “loom” isn’t as clear as the noun, but it’s most likely adopted from a similar word that appears in several Scandinavian languages. Landlubbers adopted it from sailors within about a century of its appearance, subtracted the requirement of a boat being involved, and added the additional meanings. 

If you’ve ever used an actual loom, by the way — at least a manual one — you’ll probably agree that there’s a great deal of tedium involved. I mean, you’re sitting at the thing for hours just repeating the same actions over and over. So it’s entirely possible that a weaver might feel their loom is looming over them. Luckily we don’t use any kind of machines or appliances today that just involve the same actions over and over — we’ve completely invented our way out of that sort of activity,  Um…right?