precarious
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Contents
English[edit]
Pronunciation[edit]
Etymology 1[edit]
From Latin precārius (“begged for, obtained by entreaty”), from prex, precis (“prayer”). Compare French précaire, Portuguese precário, and Spanish and Italian precario.
Adjective[edit]
precarious (comparative more precarious, superlative most precarious)
- (comparable) Dangerously insecure or unstable; perilous.
- 1898, Winston Churchill, chapter 4, in The Celebrity:
- One morning I had been driven to the precarious refuge afforded by the steps of the inn, after rejecting offers from the Celebrity to join him in a variety of amusements. But even here I was not free from interruption, for he was seated on a horse-block below me, playing with a fox terrier.
- (law) Depending on the intention of another.
Usage notes[edit]
Because the pre- element of precarious derives from prex and not the preposition prae, this term cannot — etymologically speaking — be written as *præcarious.
Quotations[edit]
- 1906, Jack London, White Fang, part I, ch III,
- Never had he been so fond of this body of his as now when his tenure of it was so precarious.
Synonyms[edit]
- (not held or fixed securely and likely to fall over): unsteady, rickety, shaky, tottering, unsafe, unstable, wobbly
Derived terms[edit]
Derived terms
Related terms[edit]
Translations[edit]
dangerously insecure or unstable; perilous
(law) depending on the intention of another
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.
Translations to be checked
Further reading[edit]
- precarious in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
- precarious in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911
Etymology 2[edit]
Adjective[edit]
precarious (not comparable)
