All 5 Uses of
precarious
in
The Magic Mountain
- It was the existence of what, in actuality, has no inherent ability to exist, but only balances with sweet, painful precariousness on one point of existence in the midst of this feverish, interwoven process of decay and repair.†
Chpt 5.7
- A sudden hemorrhage alerted his superiors to the problem; after hovering for weeks between life and death and still in precarious health, he was sent back to where he started.†
Chpt 6.6precarious = unsafe or unsure
- It permitted him the solitude he sought, the profoundest solitude imaginable, touching his heart with a precarious savagery beyond human understanding.†
Chpt 6.7 *
- I would be surprised, would be astonished, if Wendish-Slavic-Sarmatian blood was not at work there, and if it was not this massive phenomenon of a man—and who would deny him that—who proved to be a fatal weight placed on one of the two precariously balanced scales of your nation, on the Eastern scale, which caused—and still causes—the Western scale to fly heavenward.†
Chpt 6.8precariously = in an unsafe or unsure manner
- God and nature were both unjust, they had their favorites, chose to be gracious at random, adorned one man with precarious honors and the next with an easy, but ordinary fate.†
Chpt 7.9precarious = unsafe or unsure
Definition:
unsafe or in danger of getting worse -- especially in danger of falling