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Danger vs Precarious - What's the difference?

danger | precarious |

As a noun danger

is (obsolete) ability to harm; someone's dominion or power to harm or penalise see in one's danger, below.

As a verb danger

is (obsolete) to claim liability.

As an adjective precarious is

(comparable) dangerously insecure or unstable; perilous or precarious can be (dentistry) relating to incipient caries.

danger

English

Noun

(en noun)
  • (obsolete) Ability to harm; someone's dominion or power to harm or penalise. See In one's danger, below.
  • "You stand within his danger , do you not?" (Shakespeare, ''Merchant of Venice'', 4:1:180)
  • * Robynson (More's Utopia)
  • Covetousness of gains hath brought [them] in danger of this statute.
  • (obsolete) Liability.
  • * 1526 , Bible , tr. William Tyndale, Matthew V:
  • Thou shalt not kyll. Whosoever shall kyll, shalbe in daunger of iudgement.
  • (obsolete) Difficulty; sparingness.
  • (Chaucer)
  • (obsolete) Coyness; disdainful behavior.
  • (Chaucer)
  • (obsolete) A place where one is in the hands of the enemy.
  • Exposure to liable harm.
  • "Danger is a good teacher, and makes apt scholars" ((William Hazlitt), ''Table talk'').
  • An instance or cause of liable harm.
  • "Two territorial questions..unsettled..each of which was a positive danger to the peace of Europe" (''Times'', 5 Sept. 3/2).
  • Mischief.
  • "We put a Sting in him, / That at his will he may doe danger with" (Shakespeare, ''Julius Caesar'', 2:1:17).

    Synonyms

    * See also

    Derived terms

    * kicking in danger

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • (obsolete) To claim liability.
  • (obsolete) To imperil; to endanger.
  • (obsolete) To run the risk.
  • References

    * Oxford English Dictionary

    Anagrams

    * ----

    precarious

    English

    Etymology 1

    From (etyl) , and Spanish and Italian precario.

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • (comparable) Dangerously insecure or unstable; perilous.
  • *
  • , title=(The Celebrity), chapter=4 , passage=One morning I had been driven to the precarious refuge afforded by the steps of the inn, after rejecting offers from the Celebrity to join him in a variety of amusements. But even here I was not free from interruption, for he was seated on a horse-block below me, playing with a fox terrier.}}
  • (legal) Depending on the intention of another.
  • Synonyms

    * (not held or fixed securely and likely to fall over) unsteady, rickety, shaky, tottering, unsafe, unstable, wobbly

    Usage notes

    * Because the (term) element of (term) derives from prex and not the preposition prae, this term cannot — etymologically speaking — be written as *.

    Quotations

    * 1906 , (Jack London), , part I, ch III, *: Never had he been so fond of this body of his as now when his tenure of it was so precarious .

    Derived terms

    * precariously * precariousness * precariat * precarisation, precarization * precarity

    Etymology 2

    pre-'' + ''carious

    Adjective

    (-)
  • (dentistry) Relating to incipient caries.