Make Your Point > Archived Issues > PRECARIOUS
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If you see a word that starts with pre-, you've got it halfway figured out, right? "Pre-" means "before"! Easy peasy!
"Precarious" comes straight from Latin, where it literally means "depending on a prayer: depending on someone else's good favor." In this original sense, if you hold a certain job, or rent a certain home, but only for as long as someone else allows you to, with this person having the power to fire you or evict you at any moment for any reason, then your job or your home is precarious.
Part of speech:
The word "precarious" is common and formal. Use it to describe situations that haven't fallen apart yet, but seem likely to. It's a more pessimistic synonym of "delicate."
"Mr. Musk warned workers that Twitter remained in a precarious financial position and, at one point, had been four months away from running out of money."
Explain the meaning of "precarious" without saying "on thin ice" or "contingent."
Fill in the blanks: "(Something) seems precarious, as though (it's about to fall apart in some way) at any moment."
Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.
1.
The opposite of PRECARIOUS is
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