Word Finder - precarious

definition

Dangerously insecure or unstable; perilous.

definition

Depending on the intention of another.

I'm in a precarious situation here.

Again she had allowed herself to be put in a precarious situation.

I held onto a precarious perch just before I let go.

It could be a financially precarious solution.

The restoration of the Apostolic See to its original and proper seat was now possible; and the need for such a step was the more pressing, since residence in the castle at Avignon had become extremely precarious, owing to the ever-increasing confusion of French affairs.

Early examples felt precarious; but, current ones claim to be better.

She gripped it, vision blurred and balance precarious atop the four-inch heels.

At times his position is precarious enough.

Dean cried, struggling to maintain his precarious position.

The rather small bulk of Maine's published and avowed work may be explained partly by a fine literary sense which would let nothing go out under his name unfinished, partly by the drawbacks incident to precarious health.

It is a precarious position in the league; but, at least we have a football club.

A majority was thus secured for the Kossuthist programme of compromise, but a majority so obviously precarious that the king-emperor, influenced also - it was rumoured - by the views of the heirapparent, in an interview with Count Andrassy and Mr Kossuth on the 15th, refused to make any concessions to the Magyar national demands.

He had a precarious dependence on the drug.

Cynthia, while not as apprehensive as Edith had been, was obviously uncomfortable watching the climbers, especially from atop their precarious positions.

The slope dropped at a precarious angle, impossible to maneuver unsecured, only a few degrees from the perpendicular.

Our Friday meetings struggle on in a rather precarious manner - we need a regular venue.

Hence, in the absence of more complete external evidence one is obliged to recognize the limitations of Old Testament historical criticism, even though this recognition means that positive reconstructions are more precarious than negative conclusions.

Crowds of wanderers were to be met on every road; Germany, Holland and Italy were full of Jews who, pack on shoulder, were seeking a precarious livelihood at a time when peddling was neither lucrative nor safe.

Other enemies and rivals also joined in the attack, and for some time Firdousi's position was very precarious, though his pre-eminent talents and obvious fitness for the work prevented him from losing his post.

It worked, but it stopped a foot short of her floor, which made her load even more precarious.

Though perhaps less desperate than during the previous decade, the condition of Italian finance was precarious indeed.

The defection of a number of native allies (who, however, were attacked and defeated by Colonel Stevani on the I 8th of February) rendered the Italian position still more precarious; but Baratieri, unable to make up his mind, continued to mancruvre in the hope of drawing an Abyssinian attack.

It may be admitted that the identification of fragmentary leaf-remains is at most precarious.

An attempt in 1543 to approach Luther only increased the Reformer's hostility and rendered Schwenkfeld's situation still more precarious.

He succeeded in forming a Cabinet which comprised a number of non-Giolittians of all parties, but only a few of his own "old guard," so that he won the support of a considerable part of the Chamber, although the Socialists and the Popolari (Catholics) rendered his hold somewhat precarious.

The people, he contended, were no worse off under the old monarchy than they will be in the long run under assemblies that are bound by the necessity of feeding one part of the community at the grievous charge of other parts, as necessitous as those who are so fed; that are obliged to flatter those who have their lives at their disposal by tolerating acts of doubtful influence on commerce and agriculture, and for the sake of precarious relief to sow the seeds of lasting want; that will be driven to be the instruments of the violence of others from a sense of their own weakness, and, by want of authority to assess equal and proportioned charges upon all, will be compelled to lay a strong hand upon the possessions of a part.

But the passports which the provisional government asked from Wellington were refused, and as the country was declaring for the Bourbons, his position soon became precarious.

A precarious peace had reigned in the Holy Land since 1272, when Bibars had granted a truce of ten years; but the fall of the great power of Charles of Anjou set free Kala`un the successor of Bibars' son (who reigned little more than two years), to complete the work of the great sultan.

He assisted Biren to obtain the regency in the last days of the empress Anne, but when his patron fell three weeks later, his own position became extremely precarious.

For the chronology before the year ho of the Flight Wagidi did his best, but here, the material being defective, many of his conclusions are precarious.

Before the onset of those fierce invaders the precarious suzerainty of the khakan broke up. By calling in the Uzes, the Khazars did indeed dislodge the Petchenegs from the position they had seized in the heart of the kingdom between the Volga and the Don, but only to drive them inwards to the Dnieper.

Otto's precarious position was saved by a victory near Andernach when Eberhard was killed, and Giselbert drowned in the subsequent flight.

They were precarious ledges where normal people would not want to spend their day!

The precarious situation may be better for Asia's bond markets than its stocks.

From the 2009 bottom, another great run-up occurred to get us to the lofty and precarious levels where we are now.

But fuller conceptions of evolution raise further difficulties for intuitionalism in its wonted forms. Knowledge cannot be divided into the two components - immediate certainties, precarious inferences.

The failure of the archduke John to arrive in time at Wagram (5th of July), the lack of support accorded by the Spaniards to Wellesley before and after the battle of Talavera (28th of July), and the slowness with which the British government sent forth its great armada against Flushing and Antwerp, a fortnight after Austria sued for an armistice from Napoleon, enabled that superb organizer to emerge victorious from a most precarious situation.

They held in precarious subjection the hordes whom the conditions of the climate and the soil made it impossible to supplant.

Even this, however, understates the case, seeing that a really inscrutable Unknowable would destroy all confidence in the order of nature and render all knowledge entirely precarious.

He procured the election of his son Andrew as prince of Pskov, and a powerful minority of the citizens of the republic of Novgorod held the balance in his favour against the Muscovite influence, but his ascendancy in both these commercial centres was at the best precarious.

Marie Antoinette soon won the affection and confidence of the dauphin and endeared herself to the king, but her position was precarious, and both Mercy and Maria Theresa had continually to urge her to conquer her violent dislike for the favourite and try to conciliate her.

This attitude was welcome to neither faction, and for some days the position of the new arrivals on the little knoll of Kampala was very precarious.

Despite D'Erlon's misadventure the emperor had the game still in his hands, for Ney's failure had actually placed the AngloDutch army in a precarious position.

Precarious as these means of subsistence seem, he preferred the independence thus obtained to an assured position which would have involved obligations to a patron or professional duties which his weak health would have made onerous.

Here Fort Donelson on the Cumberland, Fort Henry on the Tennessee and Columbus on the Mississippi guarded the left of the Southern line, Sidney Johnston himself maintaining a precarious advanced position at Bowling Green, with his lieutenants, Zollicoffer and Crittenden, farther east at Mill Springs, and a small force under General Marshall in the mountains of eastern Kentucky.

But the authority of these pashas, strangers to the country, was always precarious.

At the time they occupied only the three towns of Algiers, Bona and Oran, with their suburbs, where their situation was moreover singularly precarious.

The position of the first governor-general, Jean Baptiste Drouet d'Erlon (1765-1844), remained fully as precarious as that of his predecessor.

The miserable condition of his country, and his own very precarious situation, weighed heavily upon his sensitive soul, and he suffered severely both in mind and body.

Both sources of supply are precarious, and instances are not infrequent of the almost entire failure of either the winter or the summer rainfall.