Peril

How to spell peril

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce peril

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does peril mean?

1. nounSerious and immediate danger or risk of harm.

Peril in a sentence

• The climbers ignored the warning and put their lives in peril.

• The report warned of the peril of investing savings without any advice.

Where does peril come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin periculum, which meant a trial, an attempt, or, by extension, the danger that an attempt could carry. That noun was built on the verbal root per-, carrying the sense of trying or risking something, the same family that lies behind 'experience' and 'experiment', words that all share the idea of putting things to the test. The Latin form passed into Old French as peril, losing its bulky middle, and English borrowed it in the early 1200s with the meaning of grave danger or jeopardy it still has today. Over the centuries the original notion of a 'trial' faded and the sense of exposure to harm took over completely. The slimmed-down French spelling is why the modern English word ends in a quiet '-il' rather than the fuller Latin '-culum', and that unstressed final syllable is the small trap, since writers sometimes drift toward '-el'.

How the word is built

• per- (from Latin periculum, a trial or risk)
• -il (English reduction of the Latin ending)