Synonyms:
precarious, unstable
Meaning: affording no ease or reassurance; "a precarious truce"
Synonyms:
parlous, perilous, precarious, touch-and-go
Meaning: fraught with danger; "dangerous waters"; "a parlous journey on stormy seas"; "a perilous voyage across the Atlantic in a small boat"; "the precarious life of an undersea diver"; "dangerous surgery followed by a touch-and-go recovery"
Usage examples
The country was so infested with hostile Indians that it made their position, thus alone, very precarious.
I believe I was accustomed to all the precarious Indian conveyances, and, as a boy, I enjoyed the dog-travaux ride as much as any.
It is true that our savage life was a precarious one, and full of dreadful catastrophes; however, this never prevented us from enjoying our sports to the fullest extent.
Jackson passed several hours most uncomfortably and painfully on his elevated perch, quaking with fear of both man and reptile, not daring to come down or to sleep in his precarious position, or able to do so for the pain of his wound, and growing hour by hour weaker from the bleeding which it was impossible to check entirely.
In her joy Anne forgot the precarious nature of her footing, incautiously ceased to lean on the window sill, gave an impulsive little hop of pleasure . . . and the next moment she had crashed through the roof up to her armpits, and there she hung, quite unable to extricate herself. Diana dashed into the duck house and, seizing her unfortunate friend by the waist, tried to draw her down.
From the introduction of Christianity among the Saxons, there had been monasteries in England; and these establishments had extremely multiplied by the donations of the princes and nobles, whose superstition, derived from their ignorance and precarious life, and increased by remorses for the crimes into which they were so frequently betrayed, knew no other expedient for appeasing the Deity, than a profuse liberality towards the ecclesiastics.