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precarious
in a sentence

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  • I stood precariously in the middle of the room, trying to find somewhere to look and something to say, wanting desperately to leave and powerless to do so.   (source)
    precariously = in an unsure manner
  • If two or three of the heavier boys could band together at one end, they could make precarious sitting for the unlucky female at the other end.   (source)
    precarious = unsafe or unsure
  • He punctuated his speech with little "hah"s and "hum"s and archaic expressions, on top of which his penchant for modern slang teetered precariously.   (source)
    precariously = in an unsafe or unsure manner
  • Three hundred yards from his hiding place he stopped where a huge dead tree leaned precariously on a smaller, living one.   (source)
    precariously = unsurely (in danger of falling)
  • Places in this house that I could once negotiate with ease have become treacherous: the sash windows are poised like traps, ready to fall on my hands, the stepstool threatens to collapse, the top shelves of the cupboards are booby-trapped with precarious glassware.†   (source)
  • You cannot begin too early to bring the power of language to children whose grasp may be precarious.†   (source)
  • Precariously perched gardens bloomed with olive trees and rosebushes.†   (source)
  • A man sat on the couch leaning precariously to the side, his right elbow supporting his body and his head nearly flat against his shoulder.†   (source)
  • We don't need stoplights, either, but in some places they dangle precariously over the road like they might crash down any minute.†   (source)
  • The life of a zoo, like the life of its inhabitants in the wild, is precarious.†   (source)
  • The front porch was propped on three cinder blocks piled precariously beneath wood flooring that showed signs of rot.†   (source)
  • For academics, the Templars' history was a precarious world where fact, lore, and misinformation had become so intertwined that extracting a pristine truth was almost impossible.†   (source)
  • Come along, dear — that's right — lovely," said Rita Skeeter again, perching herself precariously upon an upturned bucket, pushing Harry down onto a cardboard box, and closing the door, throwing them into darkness.†   (source)
  • This in turn put more weight on the left rear wheel, which slipped from its precarious purchase into the powder as well.†   (source)
  • Knowing of Mr. Odom's precarious financial situation, I was not surprised that he made several allusions to the fact that everything in the house was for sale—carpets, paintings, furniture, bric-a-brac.†   (source)
  • Twisted and turned, the camera perched precariously beside his ear, he felt like a circus grotesque.†   (source)
  • Against the far side of the fence, outside the enclosure, she saw a large object, leaning precariously.†   (source)
  • Things hung from the walls: part of an antique harness that might bring some money, three hurricane lamps, old buckets and feed pans nested precariously together, rakes.†   (source)
  • That was so typical of him; that in the midst of a precarious situation, he would suggest—as a subject for criticism—something far removed from himself!†   (source)
  • Celaena leaned back in her seat and propped her feet on the table, balancing the chair precariously on its hind legs.†   (source)
  • It slid easily now, and after a few more shoves I had it teetering precariously on the edge; one last nudge would be enough to send it over.†   (source)
  • She moves precariously, leaning on her good arm, and Mom waits for us on the floor.†   (source)
  • On four chairs arranged before an oak desk rested still more books — which Rhonda and the pencil woman removed so the children could sit — and on the desk itself, piled in precarious, leaning towers, were even more.†   (source)
  • the leeches all hit the boat more or less at once, and the sailboat rocked precariously, a word which here means "in a way which almost threw Aunt Josephine and the Baudelaire youngsters to their doom."†   (source)
  • My mother had to balance somewhat precariously on one hip near the edge of his hospital bed, but they managed.†   (source)
  • The precarious fantasy crashed down around her as quickly as it had begun.†   (source)
  • Happier perhaps than she would have been had she not had those wild, precarious years with Chacko.†   (source)
  • Cassie hauled herself upright, collapsed for a moment against the car, then righted herself, balancing precariously on her wounded leg, clutching the handgun.†   (source)
  • Pinned against a wall, we were in a precarious position.†   (source)
  • New restrictions made life for Jews in these areas more and more precarious.†   (source)
  • My position was too precarious; he was already champing at the bit to send me to hoarding school.†   (source)
  • And yet, all the time, I think we must have had an idea of how precarious the foundations of our fantasy were, because we always avoided any confrontation.†   (source)
  • They were in a precarious position, but he would let nothing else happen until Arya was cared for.†   (source)
  • Meggie had picked her precarious way along the top of that wall hundreds of times, up to the rusty hinges of the gate and back again, eyes tightly closed so she could get a clearer view of the tiger she'd imagined waiting in the bamboo at the foot of the wall, his eyes yellow as amber, or the foaming rapids to her right and her left.†   (source)
  • He had already been perched precariously on the precipice of emotion, and now the flooding scent and attendant memories staggered him.†   (source)
  • Her flat stomach peeked out from below the top, which hung precariously from her shoulders by two impossibly thin straps.†   (source)
  • She dug through a precariously stacked pile of documents on her desk till she found the ones she was looking for.†   (source)
  • He stares at the commuters who cling precariously to trams and buses, threatening at any moment to spill onto the street, and at the families who boil rice and shampoo their hair on the sidewalk.†   (source)
  • A paper bag stuffed with empty wine bottles sits on the table, precariously close to tipping over.†   (source)
  • Even in the precarious months following the annexation, when supplies had been scarce and food expensive, they had managed to keep their families fed.†   (source)
  • Sophie Newman leaned against a precariously listing bookcase and wrapped her arms around her body to stop herself from shaking.†   (source)
  • Balancing my cookies precariously on top of my milk carton, I reached toward it.†   (source)
  • Moreover, the exposition had entered that precarious early phase common to every great construction project when unexpected obstacles suddenly emerge.†   (source)
  • "The word of Christ is beloved!" he cries, standing up precariously in his boat.†   (source)
  • The Myths ...a precarious balance between the forces of good and evil There was no letter for Sophie the next morning.†   (source)
  • He was to manage the plantation as I bad done for my mother and sister; he was to negotiate marriages, to put together dowries when the entire fortune of the place rode precariously on the next year's sugar crop; he was to bargain, fight, and keep at a distance the entire material world for the world of Freniere.†   (source)
  • "Let us cut to the chase, since I assume that your situation, Hiro, may be more precarious than ours," Uncle Enzo says.†   (source)
  • When it struck them their faces went white and the lines on the machines monitoring their precarious fives went flat.†   (source)
  • He supposed that his granddaughter was giving the money to a forbidden cause, just as he imagined she had done with the weapons she had stolen, but he preferred not to know about it in order to retain his precarious stability in a world that was crumbling beneath his feet.†   (source)
  • Mikey assured me he had remembered to pack his lucky rock, a sharp-pointed bit of granite which had jabbed into his backside for three days on a previous mission when we were in a precarious hide and none of us could move even an inch.†   (source)
  • Parents are forced to park their minivans, station wagons, and SUVs on grass byways, on inclines, alongside ditches, or in the woods, precarious terrain for which family vehicles are not designed.†   (source)
  • And like a snowflake, they are very delicate and must be protected and guarded from elements that threaten to destroy their precarious balance.†   (source)
  • I looked up at the black girders of the huge bridge and saw a figure scamper precariously from perch to perch.†   (source)
  • His position looks precarious, even though he's holding on to the railing with both hands.†   (source)
  • The parapet reached almost to my shoulders, so I dragged a folding chair from the stack against the wall, opened it, and climbed onto the precarious seat.†   (source)
  • The tower looks precarious but does not fall.†   (source)
  • Yetta's head pitched forward, then back, the battered hat sliding precariously low.†   (source)
  • Except for his precarious adventure with Petra Cotes, he had never known a woman.†   (source)
  • The old head nodded once precariously on the thin neck.†   (source)
  • At the top I eased myself precariously onto the closest rafter.†   (source)
  • We crunched past the little houses perched precariously on the nearly vertical slope on both sides of us.†   (source)
  • NORAH STOOD, BAREFOOT AND PRECARIOUSLY BALANCED, on a stool in the dining room, fastening pink streamers to the brass chandelier.†   (source)
  • We passed a few older adults pedaling away on their bikes, balancing precariously on two wheels with their briefcases or bags, their heads bent toward the sidewalk.†   (source)
  • She backed him toward the other horse, leaning precariously from her saddle, and reached out for Gulliver's bridle.†   (source)
  • The animators' strike had left the Disney Studio in a precarious financial condition.†   (source)
  • The precariousness of the situation escalated by the minute, with some of the assault force pinned down by increasingly steady fire coming from virtually all directions, yet the primary SEAL assault team remained calm and focused on the shooter inside the residence.†   (source)
  • So he did what he alone could do, purified, as well as he could, his house, and opened his doors; established a precarious order in the heart of his chaos; and waited for his guest.†   (source)
  • They balanced it precariously between their balcony and one on the next building, twelve feet away.†   (source)
  • Other than her precarious hairdo, I'd always thought of the Staff Probationer as plain.†   (source)
  • I dug up the canvas bags—each weighing fifty pounds—dragged them through thesand, loaded four at a time into the dinghy, rowed through the choppy surf and out through the rocks to the Beaver, tied up, precariously balanced on the dinghy gunnels while heaving each sack on deck.†   (source)
  • You ain't old enough to marry nobody—(Seeing the moving men lifting one of her chairs precariously) Darling, that ain't no bale of cotton, please handle it so we can sit in it again!†   (source)
  • A long quill pen sat precariously behind his ear, there were ink stains all over his hands and face as well as his clothing, and he wore a pair of the thickest eyeglasses that Milo had ever seen.†   (source)
  • As she crossed the room she balanced it precariously on her free hand, her walk becoming a slight waddle.†   (source)
  • Her finances on $5 an hour were, as always, precarious.†   (source)
  • She glanced behind them and saw nothing—no angels or devils with bat wings, only yellow walls and a pale pink teakettle balanced precariously on a windowsill.†   (source)
  • Antibbe was now on the hood, on his hands and knees, balancing precariously, the gun somehow still pointing at her.†   (source)
  • Of the reasons put forward—ammunition spoiled by heavy rains, the miseries and discouragement of the exhausted troops, the enemy's advancing by approaches, the precarious situation of an army divided in half—the most serious was the looming threat of the British fleet suddenly in command of the East River.†   (source)
  • The elan with which Tereza flung herself into her new Prague existence was both frenzied and precarious.†   (source)
  • For a few precarious seconds, the chaplain tingled with a weird, occult sensation of having experienced the identical situation before in some prior time or existence.†   (source)
  • He turned to see Lucy perched precariously on a chair, nosing through the leftover batter.†   (source)
  • Worried that something had happened to complicate the already precarious situation, we wasted no time.†   (source)
  • There isn't a moment when my head doesn't pound, and breakfast—dry toast with marmalade—sits precariously on the sea of my stomach.†   (source)
  • Tanks have done in one beachhead, and the position is precarious at the others.†   (source)
  • My branch leans precariously toward the ground.†   (source)
  • The night that followed seemed to all of them disorganized and precarious.†   (source)
  • My client's health is precarious.†   (source)
  • Off the Baltoro, out of danger, he realized just how precarious his own survival had been, and how weakened he'd become.†   (source)
  • Then she realized that she was in an automobile at a precarious angle, hanging from her seat belt.†   (source)
  • Half a century later, we found the theater still precariously in business, and actor-manager Geronimo Sands rehearsing a one-man show.†   (source)
  • Momma pointed out her two boxes, which my father and I loaded precariously onto the wagon.†   (source)
  • He can be depended upon in the most precarious circumstance.†   (source)
  • A strike based on a political grievance rather than on clear-cut issues like higher wages or shorter hours is a more precarious form of protest and demands particularly efficient organization.†   (source)
  • The boat's motors screamed in unison as the craft breached a precarious opening in the reef and burst out into open water.†   (source)
  • Some spud from his class was balanced precariously on the top of the metal jungle gym, holding out his arms like wings.†   (source)
  • People do not realize how precarious our ecology is.†   (source)
  • The four of them sat, Melissa pulling out her headphones, Dess leaning back precariously in her plastic chair.†   (source)
  • His situation was precarious, perhaps more precarious than ever before.†   (source)
  • The other hand kept him stable as he balanced precariously over the courtyard.†   (source)
  • He took wet mortar flannels with him to clean the wooden bar upon which he had to balance on his thighs, feet precariously off the ground, leaning forward so as not to topple backward into the trench-a fate visited upon two Neapolitans who had been playing with one another's parts.†   (source)
  • Philip had always been in precarious health, though doctors had found no specific defect in his loose, gangling body.†   (source)
  • They were now renting the house back from the guy, but it was a precarious situation.†   (source)
  • The one lesson we can surely learn from these events is that airplanes are complex machines, operating in a precarious environment—the air—where any emergency, be it from mechanical failure, human error or weather hazard, is fraught with peril.†   (source)
  • Beorg saw an opportunity for his people to abandon their precarious nomadic existence and find a measure of luxury they had never known.†   (source)
  • Looking for any personal problems that might have put him in a precarious psychological condition.†   (source)
  • Though, I really shouldn't be judging him on normalcy, especially when I'm watching him from the confines of my own, very precarious glass house.†   (source)
  • Mr. Galanter smiled and started toward them, moving quickly on the balls of his feet, his skullcap perched precariously on the top of his balding head.†   (source)
  • I'd like to point out that right now I'm confronting my fear of heights, precariously perched on this ledge in an attempt to impress you.†   (source)
  • The creaking of the wood became a moan and a cry; my balance was precarious as if the floor were no longer level.†   (source)
  • Misty asked, matronly in an absurd way as she stood there in her tight bell-bottom jeans and tested baby formula on her wrist, all the while watching Jeffrey Files, who was in a rather precarious position as he stood on a chair and reached for Mr. Rhodes's Goodyear salesmanship plaque.†   (source)
  • Behind the shower curtain, Zooey closed his eyes for a few seconds, as though his own small craft were listing precariously in the wake.†   (source)
  • It is a feeble and precarious Union.†   (source)
  • And what I of little perception knew Kenny and Selvam knew twofold: but we none of us said anything, for we had woven about us a net of silence in whose meshes were precariously held our fears and our misgivings.†   (source)
  • On the topmost branch a bird the size of a chicken, with scarlet feathers and long legs, was precariously.†   (source)
  • I bobbed precariously on the immigrant flood; I smelled of Kilkenny, the back seats of station wagons, and the chlorine of YMCA pools.†   (source)
  • Their drummer had set up precariously on the diving board, the others were invisible.†   (source)
  • After some delay I located the pilot of an ancient Fairchild ski-plane who made his precarious living flying Barren Land trappers to their remote cabins.†   (source)
  • It was precarious and it was narrow; it was cracked in many places, and in spots rubble had accumulated upon it.†   (source)
  • But one late afternoon in June nearly brought a disastrous ending to the precarious equilibrium she had devised for herself.†   (source)
  • The high, square silo was precariously tilted, and patches of siding were missing from the barn walls.†   (source)
  • When Karellen had finished, the nations of Earth knew that their days of precarious sovereignty had ended.†   (source)
  • He was silent, bending his knees precariously and edging the rake along the underside of the trough.†   (source)
  • Not very good for your Uncle Rondo in his precarious condition, I must say.†   (source)
  • It was for this reason that the admission of new states into the Union, which threatened continuously to upset the precarious balance of power between the free and the slave states, between the agricultural and manufacturing regions, was at the heart of some of the great Senate debates in the first half of the nineteenth century.†   (source)
  • his father, prospering now, would have paid his way--for the precarious advantage of attending an older and more famous university in the East, where he was bothered by his scanty funds.   (source)
    precarious = unsure
  • Me: I feel kinda precarious in general, and I can't really date you.†   (source)
  • You know that things are precarious right now.†   (source)
  • The boat seemed frozen in the wrong direction, teetering precariously.†   (source)
  • His reason for being here seems precarious; but it's his best chance at the moment.†   (source)
  • On the bright side, swinging precariously from the roof saved my life.†   (source)
  • She could feel it precariously attached at the end of her leg.†   (source)
  • The trailer's in a precarious situation.†   (source)
  • His laptop was perched precariously on the draining board next to his cell phone.†   (source)
  • This raft business was far too precarious.†   (source)
  • From this precarious vantage point, I can see the shape of the whole arena for the first time.†   (source)
  • Nels set himself down precariously against the edge of the defendant's table.†   (source)
  • Langdon shouted, raising his arm and suspending the cryptex precariously over the hard stone floor.†   (source)
  • I lifted my hand precariously, showing him my birthmark "I'm your descendant.†   (source)
  • The others were fearless, leaping over the rocks, perching precariously on the edges.†   (source)
  • He felt himself clinging to this new level, clutching at a precarious hold and peering about.†   (source)
  • Behind the cactus, Kate was on her hands and knees, and Sticky stood precariously on her back.†   (source)
  • There's his typewriter, precarious on the tiny washstand.†   (source)
  • Each time she lifted a foot from the sand her body wobbled precariously in the gale.†   (source)
  • You don't know how precarious things are, how close this world is to falling back into ruin.†   (source)
  • Minutes later, the three made their way down the precarious slope.†   (source)
  • Above me, I could see one big drop, dangling precariously over our heads.†   (source)
  • They left the handcar behind them and walked precariously out over darkness.†   (source)
  • The actor clings precariously to the horse's mane, desperate not to fall off.†   (source)
  • They climbed on, Hazel in front, Frank and Percy balancing precariously behind her.†   (source)
  • It twists on its rope, hovering precariously until it is guided into the hands of workers below.†   (source)
  • , The boys clung precariously to the ship as it bucked and rocked.†   (source)
  • Our position isn't quite as ....precarious as you make it out to be," said Eragon.†   (source)
  • The driver had jammed on the brakes and the bus was skidding to a precarious stop.†   (source)
  • They floated up to a precarious balance on the thin rail.†   (source)
  • This is what he knew that Paul didn't: the world was precarious and sometimes cruel.†   (source)
  • His being there looked both precarious and entirely natural.†   (source)
  • The fifth curve up was especially precarious.†   (source)
  • Poised precariously at the edge, he looked down.†   (source)
  • The plows had been kept in precarious repair for two years past the span of their usefulness.†   (source)
  • Our prospects are too precarious for you, me, or any of us to indulge in false pride.†   (source)
  • The boat shifts, making it even more precarious.†   (source)
  • This was the most precarious part of Drizzt's plan.†   (source)
  • It's such a precarious balance, it's a wonder we do it at all.†   (source)
  • By now the waves were breaking precariously close.†   (source)
  • Precarious existence in peace and calamities during war.†   (source)
  • Our economy is in a state of extremely precarious equilibrium.†   (source)
  • Ice and snow cling to them precariously.†   (source)
  • It gave way under his heels at the worst moments, just when his position was the most precarious.†   (source)
  • It is such a rare, precarious spark that flashes for a moment somewhere among men, and vanishes.†   (source)
  • At last he was balanced precariously on one limb.†   (source)
  • Brucie swayed precariously over the edge, and Grady caught him by the seat of his overalls.†   (source)
  • It made him feel light-headed, precariously balanced, as if he were standing on a cliff-edge above a rock-filled gorge, and it would be dangerous for him to look down.†   (source)
  • Xenophilius strode back to the tea tray, which Hermione had managed to balance precariously on one of the cluttered side tables.†   (source)
  • You would look at the man one day and you would think, I loved you, and the tense would be past, and you would be filled with a sense of wonder, because it was such an amazing and precarious and dumb thing to have done; and you would know too why your friends had been evasive about it, at the time.†   (source)
  • The strained peace of this summit already teetered more precariously than an elephant on a tightrope.†   (source)
  • Suddenly he strikes out at a lamp that sits precariously on a crate and knocks it across the room, where it shatters against the floor.†   (source)
  • As the Architect of the Capitol began to fully comprehend the ramifications of what he was seeing, he could feel his entire world teetering precariously on the brink of disaster.†   (source)
  • The first sentence of "Hypnosis and Mind Control" was "Hypnosis is an efficacious yet precarious methodology and should not be assayed by neophytes," and it was every bit as difficult and boring as the first sentence of the whole book.†   (source)
  • His voice sounded suddenly precarious.†   (source)
  • It looked as I remembered it: hundreds of books stacked against the walls, her lavender comforter crumpled at the foot of her bed, a precarious stack of books on her bedside table, her volcanic candle just peeking out from beneath the bed.†   (source)
  • Meanwhile, his sword rested at a precarious angle in the crook of his arm, the six-foot-long blade leaning toward us.†   (source)
  • Her position was precarious.†   (source)
  • The rest of the art was cool, too—big abstract paintings of hard-edged geometric shapes, an assemblage of old wooden chairs precariously stacked to the ceiling, a huge photograph of a kid jumping on a trampoline alone in a vast harvested cornfield—but Mychal's was my favorite, and not just because I knew him.†   (source)
  • I could see the cloth falling, see the pale, flawless skin pulsing with her heart and the tiny nipples letting the cloth slip precariously, the vampire holding her right wrist tightly at her side, the tears coarsing down her blushing cheeks, her teeth biting into the flesh of her lip.†   (source)
  • A dozen white tulips in a plastic vase were precariously perched atop one of the book stacks, and when I asked her about them, she just said, "Jake and my's anniversary," and I didn't care to continue that line of dialogue, so I went back to scanning titles, and I was just wondering how I could go about learning Edgar Allan Poe's last words (for the record: "Lord help my poor soul") when I heard Alaska say, "Pudge isn't even listening to us."†   (source)
  • The old inhabitants of Macondo found themselves surrounded by newcomers and working hard to cling to their precarious resources of times gone by, but comforted in any case by the sense that they had survived a shipwreck.†   (source)
  • Tata Bidibidi, with his kind, pretty wife and their precarious boat dispensing milk powder and quinine and love to children along the river.†   (source)
  • I wasn't sure how we would reach it, though—the island was slightly bowl shaped, with hills that climbed toward its edges only to drop off at precarious seaside cliffs—but at this particular spot the edge had been rounded off and a path led down to a minor spit of sand along the water.†   (source)
  • He turned to Mortati with a troubled mystification, as if the precarious awe of the night before had slipped back into his heart.†   (source)
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