precarious
EnglishEdit
PronunciationEdit
Etymology 1Edit
From Latin precārius (“begged for, obtained by entreaty”), from prex, precis (“prayer”). Compare French précaire, Portuguese precário, and Spanish and Italian precario.
AdjectiveEdit
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 notesEdit
Because the pre- element of precarious derives from prex and not the preposition prae, this term cannot — etymologically speaking — be written as *præcarious.
QuotationsEdit
- 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.
SynonymsEdit
- (not held or fixed securely and likely to fall over): unsteady, rickety, shaky, tottering, unsafe, unstable, wobbly
Derived termsEdit
Derived terms
TranslationsEdit
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 readingEdit
- precarious in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
- precarious in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911
Etymology 2Edit
AdjectiveEdit
precarious (not comparable)