What's the difference between perilous and precarious?

Perilous


Definition:

  • (a.) Full of, attended with, or involving, peril; dangerous; hazardous; as, a perilous undertaking.
  • (a.) Daring; reckless; dangerous.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) For his lone, perilous journey that defied the US occupation authorities, Burchett was pilloried, not least by his embedded colleagues.
  • (2) The mutual exclusions of languages are destined to become perilous.
  • (3) One of the problems I have with the New Atheism is that it fixates on ethics, ignoring aesthetics at its peril.
  • (4) Crisis management is more perilous and the international environment is, if anything, less controllable.
  • (5) After the Scottish referendum, Cameron knew the “perilous fragility of the public’s support for the sensible choice”.
  • (6) Asylum seekers take perilous boat journeys with their children because they judge the risk of violence, persecution and death where they are to be greater than the risk of getting on that boat.
  • (7) Sunderland and Middlesbrough in Premier League peril Read more Karanka is not alone in observing that “when Gastón plays well, it makes a big difference to us” but acknowledges he has never quite fulfilled the hype which accompanied his £12m move from Bologna to Southampton four years ago.
  • (8) Phil Mitchell was far more compelling when he was knocking off his bruvver Grant's wife Sharon than his ill-advised adventure advertising the perils of taking crack.
  • (9) An early return home is unlikely given the perilous condition of the plant three weeks after the tsunami.
  • (10) By this time I am off the track and perilously close to slipping over a cliff, which sounds dramatic but there is lots of scrub below to break my fall and bones before I would end up in the water.
  • (11) It feels like most people who are climbing Everest are having a film crew follow them.” Sherpa review – peril in the shadow of Everest Read more Since April’s earthquake, the Nepalese government have limited access to permits to experienced climbers, hoping that will address concerns about safety and overcrowding.
  • (12) Richard Overholt issued the first warning signals about the perils of tobacco and served as an indefatigable leader of the antismoking crusade throughout his professional career.
  • (13) We have a society accustomed to the pursuit of prosperity and individual gratification, often resentful of immigrants, and possessing a perilously skin-deep attachment to democracy.
  • (14) Mills, who experienced the triumphs and perils of an Olympics firsthand when his native Australia hosted the games in 2000, said he was particularly eager to discuss London 2012 with Hunt, whose department is responsible for the games.
  • (15) But the ultimate aim of the pro-life movement isn't to make sure that all clinics act within the law: it's to change the law so that most of these clinics' activities become illegal, a situation that would place both women and the children they are forced to bear in perilous situations.
  • (16) With this threat, the issue became larger than any film, larger than Sony and larger than the entertainment industry: societal and artistic values are in peril.
  • (17) There are fears that Cameron’s position could be in grave peril at a post-election meeting of the 1922 Committee, which has been brought forward to the Monday after polling day on 7 May, if the Tories fail to get a healthy lead over Labour in the Commons.
  • (18) The Fox News anchor showed excerpts of clips that had been released by CBS earlier on Monday at his request and claimed they backed up his descriptions of the peril he faced when reporting from the country at the end of the Falklands war.
  • (19) The delights and perils of the British constitution are that you never quite know.
  • (20) John Muir, a giant of the conservation movement, summed up the importance of bees to the human race when he said: “When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” We harm them at our peril.

Precarious


Definition:

  • (a.) Depending on the will or pleasure of another; held by courtesy; liable to be changed or lost at the pleasure of another; as, precarious privileges.
  • (a.) Held by a doubtful tenure; depending on unknown causes or events; exposed to constant risk; not to be depended on for certainty or stability; uncertain; as, a precarious state of health; precarious fortunes.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) This case demonstrates that the manifestations may be delayed and that urgent surgical intervention may be lifesaving despite the precarious status of these patients.
  • (2) Enlargement to include poorer states such as Armenia, Kyrgyzstan or Tajikistan would make the balance of the EEU even more precarious.
  • (3) Matthew Taylor was appointed by Theresa May last October to review employment practices in the light of concerns about the precarious nature of work, particularly in the gig economy.
  • (4) The diagnosis has usually been made only at autopsy, and early surgical intervention has often been withheld because of the patient's precarious hematological status.
  • (5) Rather than experiencing a slowdown in its frenetic building sector, however, Kabul is increasingly overrun with precarious apartment blocks.
  • (6) One suggestion is to abandon the scheme in London and south-east England but continue it in the north and Midlands, where market conditions are less precarious.
  • (7) What’s left for such workers is the same as their blue-collar counterparts: lower wages, precarious work and a lot of borrowing.
  • (8) After more than a quarter of a century of camping out, the house, with its seven flights of stairs (a trial to Lessing in her final years), seemed almost to be supported by a precarious interior scaffolding of piles of books and shelves.
  • (9) Some of these are functions that would once have been taken on through squatting – and sometimes still are, as at Open House , a social centre recently and precariously opened in London's Elephant & Castle, an area torn apart by rampant gentrification, where estates are flogged off to developers with zero commitment to public housing and the aforementioned "shopping village" is located in a derelict estate.
  • (10) But I think that can be repaired.” Although Senate Republican leaders have been more willing to rally behind Trump, their members find themselves in a decidedly precarious position.
  • (11) The financial markets are keenly aware of Britain's precarious position.
  • (12) Not infrequently the only unilateral care overlooks important aspects, which are precarious for the course of the disease.
  • (13) The predilection of rectal stricture and its proposed precursor, salmonella ulcerative proctitis, for the middle third of the rectum was attributed to a normally precarious arterial supply which renders the rectum unusually susceptible to ischemic injury and decreases its reparative capacity.
  • (14) Despite public homage to the knowledge economy, this new regime seems designed to make the careers of the next generation of academics as precarious and unrewarding as possible.
  • (15) The precarious position of small schools is due to the loss of the local funding formula, and with it local democratic control.
  • (16) Buses drop workers on the roads and they make the precarious walk through the dark to their homes.
  • (17) When compared with classification by number of diseased vessels and by arteriographic score of Friesinger, the nonprecarious cases had better prognoses than the precarious.
  • (18) When people say it doesn’t matter who you vote for, in this election, in this seat, in this city, it really will.” Becca, who has spent the past two years in poorly paid and precarious part-time jobs, is one of 12 people recruited for the last of five focus groups organised by qualitative polling firm BritainThinks, working in partnership with the Guardian, to examine five key battleground seats and the larger political themes that will help decide the election.
  • (19) The AIDS situation highlights the precarious balance between individual rights and the public welfare, patients' rights, and the rights of nurses and their professional obligations.
  • (20) According to new research from the University of Exeter, women at the top of the ladder are being promoted into risky and precarious leadership positions where the chance of failure is high.