- 1極度危險的、險惡的（偏書面；口語多說「很危險」）
When something is perilous, it is very dangerous — not a small risk, but the kind where someone could get hurt or a plan could fall apart. People use it more in writing, news, and stories than in everyday talk. A child is more likely to say “that’s so dangerous”; a book might say “a perilous journey across the mountains.” It is often about real physical danger (perilous seas, a perilous climb). People also stretch it a little, on purpose, for a situation that could easily turn into trouble: a perilous lead in a game, a perilous political choice. Though actually, when they stretch it that far they are being a bit dramatic — the core picture is still “this could go badly wrong.”
From the word’s history
From Old French perilleus; peril + -ous.
源自古法文 perilleus，即 peril（危險）加 -ous。
組成peril（危險）+ -ous（充滿／帶有那種性質）。來自中古英語 perilous、古法文 perilleus；名詞 peril 同源，拉丁文源頭是 perīculōsus。和較罕見的 periculous 是一對 doublet（同一來源的雙胞胎詞）。
同家族的字
- perilthe noun inside it: danger
- perilouslythe adverb: in a perilous way
- imperilto put someone or something in peril
原始詞典資料1 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
perilousadj/ˈpɛɹ.ɪ.ləs/
- 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.
- The effects are already being felt. Gamma radiation is flooding through the gaps; the quick-breeding viruses are mutating through half the world, faster than the Medical Art can control them, so that millions of us are sneezing and choking—and dying, too, for lack of antibiotics and proper care. Air travel is a perilous thing; just today, a stratosphere roc crashed head-on into a fragment of the sky and was killed with all its passengers.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。