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Precariously   /prɪkˈɛriəsli/   Listen
Precariously

adverb
1.
In a precarious manner.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Precariously" Quotes from Famous Books



... justice, it might have commanded more respect. But he knew that this was the opportunity to make the one big chance which the years had been keeping from him. At the start Slavens had told the old man that his son had a chance for life; he had not said how precariously it lay balanced upon the lip of the dark canyon, nor how an adverse breath might send it beyond the brink. The weight of the responsibility now lay on him alone. Failure would bring upon him an avalanche of blame; success a glorious impetus to his ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... firm, confident eyes, Mr. Prohack realised, perhaps for the first time, that the fruit of his loins was no common boy. The mere fact that as an out-of-work ex-officer, precariously making a bit in motor-bicycle deals, he had dared to go to Melchizidek's firm for clothes, and that he was now daring to affront Melchizidek,—this sole fact separated him from ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett

... lions that ever existed, painted or otherwise, white lions, blue lions, black, green, or red lions, surely never was there one like the "White Lion" at Tenterden. For he was such a remarkably placid lion, although precariously balanced upon the extreme point of one claw, and he stared down at all and sundry with such round, inquiring eyes, as much as ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... Constantine, had seen with indignation the sceptre of the West usurped by a perfidious barbarian. Arming a desperate troop of slaves and gladiators, he overpowered the feeble guard of the domestic tranquillity of Rome, received the homage of the senate, and assuming the title of Augustus, precariously reigned during a tumult of twenty-eight days. The march of some regular forces put an end to his ambitious hopes: the rebellion was extinguished in the blood of Nepotian, of his mother Eutropia, and of his adherents; and the proscription ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... person turned in a fire alarm, Neale, with the help of Luke Shepard and Uncle Rufus, set up the step-ladder directly under the squalling cat and her kittens. From the top step, on which he perched precariously with Luke and the old negro steadying the ladder, Neale reached up with a rake and unhooked the hanging basket ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill

... henchman, Skookum, had already perceived how the fight was going and his discretion proved much greater than his valour. He dropped the lantern and darted out at the door. As good luck would have it, the lantern fell right-end up and, after wobbling precariously on its rim, sat upright in the corner, blinked, then continued to shed a fitful light ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson

... chief posts, or from merchants in the towns, to whom a few concealed skins are still reserved to trade. An Indian's time appears to be worth but little to him at this season, if at any season. He lives most precariously on small things, such as he can pick up as he travels loitering along the lake shores, or strolls, with easy footsteps, about the forest precincts of his lodge. A single fish, or a bird or squirrel, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... not to have heard. He felt precariously guilty toward this woman who had befriended him. The next instant he had forgotten Miss Sherwood and his pulsing thoughts were all on Maggie in that speeding car. She had been profoundly shaken by that afternoon's experience, this much he knew. But what was going to be the real effect ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott

... down the course, the rush of wind from the big propeller sent more than one Ecuadorean's wide-brimmed hat flying from his head, and to the enjoyment of all, a native who was perched precariously upon an up-ended ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser

... stair, and I judged that my deck chair would fill it completely, leaving about six inches for the captain's promenade. Behind the superstructure there was a sort of after-deck, nearly four feet of it. When my trunks and boxes had been piled up there, with the deck chair balancing precariously atop, and with Romoldo reclining luxuriously in it, his distraught pompadour was about on a level with the top of ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... residence, which was fixed at twelve weeks in the year (not necessarily continuous), and a distinction was admitted between resident and non-resident canons. Again, the Common Fund was now to be charged with the salaries of the Vicars, who had hitherto been precariously paid by the Canons ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett

... that if it is only right for a man to spend money on that which he can truly and thoroughly enjoy, the doctrine applies with equal force to the rich and to the poor, to the man who has amassed many thousands as well as to the youth precariously beginning life. And it may be asked, Is not this merely preparing misers, who are not the best of company? But the principle was this: that which a man has not fairly earned, and, further, that which he cannot fully enjoy, does not belong to him, but is a part of mankind's treasure which he holds ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... I groped my way back, something blew toward me like a wraith from the sea. It wore a gray, woolly bathrobe, a tiny wisp of white hair fastened precariously with one hair-pin, and a pair of knitted bedroom slippers. It was Aunt Nancy, and we executed then and there an intricate pas de deux in our common efforts to meet. Finally the Columbia ceased her individual evolutions long enough to enable ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan

... according to the perversity of dreams there is no object near. I clutch empty air, and then I fall downward, and still downward, and in the midst of the fall I dissolve into the atmosphere upon which I have been floating so precariously. ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller

... they would always say as a last excuse. And each one was pressing closer to his neighbor in order to make a few more inches of room, and helping to wedge his scanty baggage among the other bundles swaying most precariously above. Little by little, Desnoyers was losing all his advantage as a first comer. These poor people who had been waiting for the train from four in the morning till eight at night, awakened his pity. The women, ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... summons, "Please pass out forrad." When this is heard in Bowdoin Square, we rise and push forward, knuckling one another's backs in our eagerness, and perhaps glancing behind us at the tumult within. Not only are all our places occupied, but the aisle is left full of passengers precariously supporting themselves by the straps in the roof. The rear platform is stormed and carried by a party with bundles; the driver is instantly surrounded by another detachment; and as the car moves away from the office, the platform steps ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells

... on Mr. Thayre amiably, "if he hungers for solitude I'm the last chap in the world to intrude on his meditations. I jolly well know myself what it means to hang precariously on the fringe of plutocracy with only a beastly whisper of an income—and by the Lord Harry I'm a bachelor." Several auditors nodded their sympathetic understanding, but a tall youth with viking blond hair and vacant eyes which seemed to proclaim, "I am looking, but I see not," ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... his trousers pocket a huge roll of bills. Susan smiled at this proof that he still retained the universal habit of gamblers, politicians and similar loose characters of large income, precariously derived. He counted off three hundreds and four fifties and held them out to her. "Let me in ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... to him he remained there precariously alone with the stanchion for a long, long time. The rain poured on him, flowed, drove in sheets. He breathed in gasps; and sometimes the water he swallowed was fresh and sometimes it was salt. For the most part he kept his eyes shut tight, as if suspecting his sight might be destroyed ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad

... Officer, perched precariously in an angle of the walls of a ruined cottage, stared through his glasses at the confusion of the fight for hour after hour until his eyes ached and his vision swam. The Forward Officer had been there since daybreak, and because no ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable

... Imperial tutelage. He would presumably find himself in a precarious case under the arbitrary and irresponsible authority of an alien master working through an alien master class. The doubt which presents itself is as to whether this common man would be more precariously placed, or would come in for a larger and surer sum of hard usage and scant living, under this projected order of things, than what he already is exposed to in his pecuniary relations with his well-to-do compatriots under the current system of ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... and most unlucky dog in the world either has or had some small portion of money. No matter how small, how hardly, or how precariously earned, he has seen, from time to time, a glimpse of the colour of his own cash, and rejoiced accordingly as that colour was brown, white, or yellow. It follows, therefore, that even the poorest and most unlucky ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various

... on the upper step of the long flight of stairs which lean precariously against the scarred face of the frame residence upon the second floor front of which the lares and penates of the Shane family are crowded ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Pocahontas, the morning dawned on an undiminished number of English, and at high tide they embarked in their boat and returned to Jamestown with their provisions so precariously won. ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson

... in the most amiable condition of mind, and a hint of the ribald would have instantly transformed a passive anger into a blind fury. Thus, a scene hung precariously; but its potentialities became as nothing on ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath

... fallen out with the Prior of his House for having writ a little book relating the calamities of Mam'zelle Fanchon. The end of it was he turned tavern-keeper at The Hague. He was now returned to France and living precariously by the sermons he composed, which were full of high argument and eloquence. After supper he had read us these same calamities of Mam'zelle Fanchon, source of his own, and the reading had kept us there till a late hour. At last I found myself without-doors with my good master, ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France

... emperor had precariously reigned by the right of conquest; but the authority of the pope was founded on the soft, though more solid, basis of opinion and habit. The removal of a foreign influence restored and endeared the shepherd to his flock. Instead of the arbitrary or ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... Verax had lived precariously by betting. To be a St Verax was always to be a sportsman. Roger's father had created a record in the sporting world by winning the Derby and the Waterloo Cup with the same animal—though, in each case, it narrowly escaped disqualification. Roger himself almost created another record by ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne

... there to be done? asked the field-cornet of himself. Were they to remain there all their lives, subsisting precariously on game and roots? Were his children to ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... in the drawing-room with the remains of afternoon tea still spread on a small table before her. I had just time to notice that two people had been drinking tea and that the second cup, balanced precariously on the arm of a chair, was half full. Then my mother crossed the room rapidly and kissed me three times. She may have done such a thing before. I think it likely that she did when I was a baby. She certainly never kissed me more than ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham

... plows, threw to the surface much that was unsightly, yet full of potentialities for good, the spot was the same. The conditions and the environment looking at it in the large were not widely different, the ancient Anglo-Saxon freedom struggling ever for its foothold as the centuries lapse, now precariously uncertain as Privilege and Prerogative push hotly, now fixed and strong in great moments of triumph; and the end is not yet. In the earlier time the destinies of America were closely interlocked with England ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer

... turning now to active hatred, flung away readily upon him, bewildered, unheard, one of three precious curses (some mystery of wasting sickness therein) with which Poseidon had indulged him. It seemed sad that one so young must call for justice, precariously, upon the gods, the dead, the very walls! Admiring youth dared hardly bid farewell to their late comrade; are generous, at most, in [183] stolen, sympathetic glances towards the fallen star. At home, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... marry again, and Mrs Gildea had gathered that the less said about his social adventures the better. Financially, he had subsisted precariously as a company promoter. There had come a final smash: and one morning the Earl of Gaverick had been found dead in his bed, an empty medicine bottle by his side. As he had been in the habit of taking chloral the Coroner's jury agreed upon the theory ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... with the mob, that sense of identity with these people and their wrongs, of submergence with them in their cause possessed her. Despite her ancestry, her lot was cast with them. She, too, had been precariously close to poverty, had known the sordidness of life; she, too, and Lise and Hannah had been duped and cheated of the fairer things. Eagerly she had drunk in the vocabulary of that new and terrible philosophy. The master class must be exterminated! Was it not true, if she had been of that class, that ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... confront "old Bob" and demand retraction. The road down the deep, wild ravine was rugged, and he jogged along slowly until at last he came within sight of the crazy, weather-beaten old building tottering precariously on the brink of the impetuous torrent which gashed the mountain side. Crags towered above it; vines and mosses clung to its walls; it was a dank, cool, shady place, but noisy enough with the turmoil of its primitive machinery and the loud, hoarse voices of the loungers striving ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... both in trouble at present. A very dear young friend of ours, who passed her Christmas holidays here, has been taken dangerously ill with a fever, from which she is very precariously recovering, and I expect a summons to fetch her when she is well enough to bear the journey from Bury. It is Emma Isola, with whom we got acquainted at our first visit to your sister at Cambridge, and she has ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... where the dust they had kicked up had not yet settled, the messenger boy stood open-mouthed, with his cap tilted precariously on the bulge of his head, a damp lock of hair straggling down into his right eyebrow, while he craned his neck to stare after ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower

... wrote regularly, twice a week, to the Transcontinental for his five dollars, though it was only semi-occasionally that he elicited a reply. He did not know that the Transcontinental had been staggering along precariously for years, that it was a fourth-rater, or tenth-rater, without standing, with a crazy circulation that partly rested on petty bullying and partly on patriotic appealing, and with advertisements that were scarcely ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... been so tightly clasped together, steeling her, the rail was startlingly cold; but the touch of it nerved her, because it was firm. She felt the dinghy yield as she stepped from it, and she seemed for one instant to be hanging precariously in space above the terrifying waters. Then she was at the top of the ladder, ready for Keith's warning shout about the descent to the deck. She jumped down. She was aboard the yacht; and as she glanced around Keith was upon the deck beside her, catching ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton

... as quick as possible, and about 4 p.m. a big lorry came for our equipment. We loaded it, seven of us mounted on the top, and the rest went in two of our own cars. The scene was really intensely comic. Seven Scottish women balanced precariously on the pile of luggage; a Serbian doctor with whom Dr. Inglis is to travel standing alongside in an hysterical condition, imploring us to hurry, telling us the Bulgarians were as good as in the town already; Dr. Inglis, quite unmoved, demanding the whereabouts ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren

... seemed to Hazel, roosting precariously on the very summit of the world. On both sides the mountain pitched away sharply in rugged folds. Distance smoothed out the harsh declivities, blurred over the tremendous canons. Looking eastward, she saw an ample basin, which gave ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... the secondaries, and broad white tips to the outer tail feathers, which are black. This species is very abundant in some localities within our borders. Their nests are very frail platforms of twigs placed in trees or bushes or precariously suspended among tangled vines. Their two eggs are white or creamy white, and ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed



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