(n.) A headlong steep; a very steep, perpendicular, or overhanging place; an abrupt declivity; a cliff.
Example Sentences:
(1) On Sunday Assange said: "Will it [the US] return to and reaffirm the revolutionary values it was founded on, or will it lurch off the precipice, dragging us all into a dangerous and oppressive world?"
(2) In a day of unremitting gloom, and yet more market turbulence, the Greek government also stood on the precipice of collapse, risking an uncontrolled default, as the government of George Papandreou faced a late-night confidence vote in parliament.
(3) They have driven us to the edge of a precipice where we now stand – with the spectre of Syria and Iran before us."
(4) "We may not be looking over the precipice as we were last autumn, but what we are likely to see is a long, slow reduction in the standard of living in this country.
(5) If parties want to try – and I believe they do want to move to a de-escalation – I think there are sets of choices that are available,” he said, expressing hope that “we can seize this moment and pull back from the precipice”.
(6) In a canyon between grey shattered precipices of bomb-ravaged buildings, an uncountable number of people wait for food.
(7) Filled with classic British gangster-movie iconography – hard London faces hung upside-down from meathooks, the stock-car pile-up – The Long Good Friday is also a grownup, despairing look at Britain on the edge of an economic and political precipice.
(8) Peg Johnston, the owner, finds herself facing this precipice every year.
(9) However, while a government shutdown is off the table, the spectre of the kind of political brinkmanship that took the US to the precipice of an economic crisis in October has not been entirely averted.
(10) As its population ages, China is racing toward a “demographic precipice,” says Wang Feng, a professor of sociology at the University of California at Irvine.
(11) "But it's at a precipice where it needs to jump to the next level of evolution."
(12) There is a palpable feeling in the country that the ruling junta has run out of ground, teetering on the precipice and threatening to take the country with it.
(13) But by voting, First Nations can return their communities from the precipice.
(14) For Abbott, on the precipice of fulfilling his destiny in politics, it would have seemed like collegiality, not outright soul-selling, to become a man for Peta and for Brian down in party headquarters, a man for the colleagues, a man for the Liberal party base, a man for Rupert and for Alan Jones and for Ray Hadley (when Scott Morrison wasn’t available) – a man who would validate the various irrationalisms of the wireless ranters and the white male columnists in Rupert’s employ – young and older fogeys who cherish past certainties, and who feel just as ambivalent about the future as Abbott himself feels.
(15) IFS inequality chart IFS warns of biggest squeeze on pay for 70 years over Brexit Read more “These troubling forecasts show millions of families across the country are teetering on a precipice, with 400,000 pensioners and over one million more children likely to fall into poverty and suffer the very real and awful consequences that brings if things do not change.
(16) With the NFL’s first openly gay player about to join the workplace environment, the League stands on the precipice of a new era, where a culture of respect won’t just be promoted, but will be strictly enforced.
(17) More generally, relations with the US and Europe spiralled, with the values gap ever bigger and the rhetoric on both sides ever more spiky, while still refraining from going entirely over the precipice.
(18) The prospect of protracted political instability has stoked fears that Greece is not just teetering on a political precipice but also laying the ground, however unwittingly, for its own euro exit.
(19) This time, people saw they were at the edge of a precipice and they reacted.” He said of his absolute majority in parliament elections this week , that cemented the collapse of the decades-old traditional French parties, as well as being seen abroad as holding back populism: “My election, and my majority in parliament are not the end of something: they are a challenging beginning.
(20) Since neither the men nor the animals could be sure of their footing on account of the snow, any who stepped wide of the path or stumbled, overbalanced and fell down the precipices.” At length they reached a spot where the path suddenly seemed impassable, as Livy describes it: “A narrow cliff falling away so sheer that even a light-armed soldier could hardly have got down it by feeling his way and clinging to such bushes and stumps as presented themselves.” “The track was too narrow for the elephants or even the pack animals to pass,” writes Polybius.
Quagmire
Definition:
(n.) Soft, wet, miry land, which shakes or yields under the feet.
Example Sentences:
(1) All these looked likely to be achieved in the final days of the talks, and still may be – if the hosts can pull the talks out of the quagmire on Saturday.
(2) Episodic changes in cognition unrelated to epilepsy or syncope remain a quagmire.
(3) Aimless wandering in the quagmire of imaging techniques is very expensive and nonproductive.
(4) The funding quagmire extends to Pakistan itself, where the US cables detail sharp criticism of the government's ambivalence towards funding of militant groups that enjoy covert military support.
(5) A Both the United States and the UK have consistently ruled this out, and it seems highly unlikely at present that either would risk a return to a high-casualty military quagmire from which they have only just extricated themselves.
(6) In a speech in Manchester, Trevor Phillips, the head of the Commission for Racial Equality, will warn against the country "sleep-walking" into a "New Orleans-style" quagmire of "fully fledged ghettoes".
(7) The economic quagmire has provided the perfect breeding ground for general merchandise discounters, who have expanded aggressively – more than filling the void created by the collapse of Woolworths in 2008.
(8) When American politicians consider solutions to the threat posed by Isis, they tend to favor abstractions over policy detail because, although Americans want to do more to root out Isis, we’re afraid of getting involved in another quagmire in the Middle East.
(9) Economic sanctions have combined with falling oil prices to deal a serious blow to the Russian economy in recent months, leading many to suspect that Putin might be looking for a way out of the east Ukraine quagmire.
(10) And Brennan knows that any questions left unanswered will only drag the department further into a quagmire.
(11) The British government’s appetite for being sucked back into the kind of tortuous negotiations and legal quagmire that lay behind the release of Shaker Aamer is likely to be limited.
(12) He was accused of being more interested in party politics than a way out of the quagmire.
(13) Asked if he needed to make a pragmatic deal with Assad in the face of the greater Isis threat he said: "In the past, simply saying, 'My enemy's enemy is my friend' has led to all sorts of moral quagmires and difficulties.
(14) Still, the early agreement on forests has boosted confidence in the UN process at a time when the main strand of talks on a global deal appear stuck in an 80-page long quagmire of a text.
(15) It has only provoked an insatiable demand from the public for more "free" services, with the result that the system has become a quagmire of cost overruns and unfulfilled and unrealizable promises.
(16) The perils of both objectives – a bloody quagmire – are the sources of Obama’s hesitation in Syria.
(17) Moscow remains wary of the Afghan quagmire, with memories still fresh of the disastrous 1979-89 war that cost the lives of 15,000 Russian soldiers and uncounted Afghan civilians, and ultimately contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
(18) The present debate on capital punishment cannot be detached from the “Kurdish question”, which is stuck in a quagmire.
(19) People have tried and tried for many years and it always seems to be a quagmire."
(20) deals with the quagmire that awaits people caught in the welfare system.