precarious

English

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /pɹɪˈkɛəɹi.əs/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛəɹi.əs
• Hyphenation: pre‧ca‧ri‧ous

Etymology 1

From Latin precārius (“begged for, obtained by entreaty”), from prex, precis (“prayer”). Compare French précaire, Portuguese precário, and Spanish and Italian precario.

Adjective

precarious (comparative more precarious, superlative most precarious)

1. (comparable) Dangerously insecure or unstable; perilous.

   Synonyms: unsteady, rickety, shaky, tottering, unsafe, unstable, wobbly

   • 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter IV, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:

     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.

   • 1906 May–October, Jack London, chapter III, in White Fang, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., published October 1906, →OCLC, part 1 (The Wild):

     Never had he been so fond of this body of his as now when his tenure of it was so precarious.

   • 2016, Doris L. Bergen, “8 - Flashover: The Killing Centers, 1942-1944”, in War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust, page 266:

     The existence of Jewish partisans was precarious. They lived from hand to mouth, stealing when necessary, arranging secret deliveries of food, and spending hours and even days in holes in the ground when danger threatened.

   • 2022 November 2, Paul Bigland, “New trains, old trains, and splendid scenery”, in RAIL, number 969, page 57:

     One can't escape the huge nuclear facility at Sellafield (supplier of much of the line's remaining freight traffic), or miss the wild shingle beaches with exposed and precarious bungalows sandwiched between the railway and the shore at Braystones.

2. (law) Depending on the intention of another.

Usage notes

Because the pre- element of precarious derives from prex and not the preposition prae, this term cannot — etymologically speaking — be written as *præcarious.

Derived terms

• bioprecarity
• precariat
• precariously
• precariousness
• precarisation
• precarity
• precarization

Related terms

• pray

Translations

dangerously insecure or unstable; perilous

• Bulgarian: несигурен (bg) (nesiguren), ненадежден (bg) (nenadežden)
• Catalan: precari (ca)
• Chinese:

  Cantonese: 不穩嘅 / 不稳嘅 (bat wan² ge³), 危險嘅 / 危险嘅 (ngai⁴ him² ge³), 朝不保夕嘅 (ziu¹ bat¹ bou² zik⁶ ge³)

• Czech: nejistý, prekérní (cs), ošidný
• Danish: prekær, penibel
• Dutch: hachelijk (nl), onzeker (nl), precair (nl), onbestendig (nl)
• Finnish: vaarallinen (fi)
• French: précaire (fr)
• Galician: please add this translation if you can
• German: heikel (de), schwierig (de), unsicher (de), prekär (de), schlimm (de), bedrohlich (de), gefährdet (de), bedenklich (de)
• Greek: επισφαλής (el) (episfalís)
• Hungarian: bizonytalan (hu), ingatag (hu), kétes (hu)
• Icelandic: please add this translation if you can
• Italian: please add this translation if you can
• Korean: 다루기 어려운 (darugi eoryeoun)
• Latin: precarius
• Mongolian: please add this translation if you can
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: prekær (no)

  Nynorsk: prekær

• Occitan: precari (oc)
• Plautdietsch: roakboa
• Polish: niebezpieczny (pl), niepewny (pl)
• Portuguese: precário (pt)
• Russian: опа́сный (ru) (opásnyj), риско́ванный (ru) (riskóvannyj), ненадёжный (ru) (nenadjóžnyj), ша́ткий (ru) (šátkij)
• Serbo-Croatian: please add this translation if you can
• Spanish: precario (es)
• Swedish: prekär (sv)
• Welsh: ansicr (cy), simsan (cy), sigledig (cy)

(law) depending on the intention of another

• Dutch: precair (nl), ter bede
• German: widerruflich (de)
• Hungarian: visszavonható (hu), engedélytől függő

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

Translations to be checked

• Dutch: precair (nl)
• German: prekär (de)
• Portuguese: precário (pt)
• Serbo-Croatian: krhak (sh), nesiguran (sh)
• Swedish: prekär (sv)
• Yiddish: אומזיכער (umzikher)

Further reading

• “precarious”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “precarious”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
• Precarious in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)

Etymology 2

From pre- +‎ carious.

Adjective

precarious (not comparable)

1. (dentistry) Relating to incipient caries.