Perilous
//ˈpɛɹ.ɪ.ləs// adj
adj ·Uncommon ·College level
Definitions
Adjective
- 1 Dangerous, full of peril.
"Three miles or more to our starboard is a low dim line. It is the Eastern shore of Central Africa. We are running to the southward, before the North East Monsoon, between the mainland and the reef that for hundreds of miles fringes this perilous coast."
Adjective
- 1 fraught with danger wordnet
Example
More examples"Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous."
Etymology
From Middle English perilous, from Old French perilleus, equivalent to peril + -ous, from the noun peril, or from Latin perīculōsus. Doublet of periculous.
More for "perilous"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.