Perilous
adjectiveFull of danger or risk; likely to cause harm.
How to spell perilous
8 letters · 3 syllables
How to pronounce perilous
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does perilous mean?
- adjectiveFull of danger or risk; likely to cause harm.
Perilous in a sentence
-
The icy mountain road made the drive home genuinely perilous.
-
Investing the family savings in one untested venture seemed a perilous decision.
Where does perilous come from?
Language of origin: Latin
The word comes from the Latin periculum, which meant a 'danger', a 'trial', or a risky 'attempt', built on an ancient root per- carrying the idea of trying or risking something. From periculum Latin formed the adjective periculosus, meaning 'full of danger'. This passed into Old French as perilleus and entered English around the year 1300 as 'perilous', meaning fraught with danger. The same per- root of trial and risk also sits inside the everyday words 'experience', 'experiment', and 'expert', all of which once carried the sense of putting something to the test. A useful spelling hint is that the word is simply the noun 'peril' with '-ous' added, so the middle keeps a single 'l' rather than the doubled one writers sometimes expect.
How the word is built
- peril (danger, from Latin periculum)
- -ous (full of, adjective suffix)
Fix your spelling for good.
Spelling Garden finds the words you personally get wrong, plants them in a garden, and brings each one back just before you would have forgotten it.
Just five minutes a day is all it takes to fix your spelling.