Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Perilous \Per"il*ous\, a. [OF. perillous, perilleus, F. p['e]rilleux, L. periculosus. See Peril.] [Written also perillous.]
-
Full of, attended with, or involving, peril; dangerous; hazardous; as, a perilous undertaking.
Infamous hills, and sandy, perilous wilds.
--Milton. -
Daring; reckless; dangerous. [Obs.]
--Latimer.For I am perilous with knife in hand.
--Chaucer. [1913 Webster] -- Per"il*ous*ly, adv. -- Per"il*ous*ness, n.
Wiktionary
adv. In a perilous manner.
WordNet
adv. in a dangerous manner; "he came dangerously close to falling off the ledge" [syn: hazardously, dangerously]
Usage examples of "perilously".
The Archivist was seated on a white marble lift bench, holding his winecup in both hands: the Horsemaster stood beside him, leaning over to speak to him with one booted foot on the stone slab, his own cup dangling perilously from loose fingers.
The room swayed perilously and he flopped down on to the bed immediately, Marris catching his arm.
Ailoura moved within the circle of speakers, her unnaturally flared and pungent striped musteline tail waving perilously close to the humans.
Because my endocranial volume outpointed hers by at least seven hundred centimeters, her baby had inherited from me a genetic template for a brain case perilously larger than the habiline norm.
Veterans Building, Franz resumed his sidewise and backward peerings, now somewhat randomized, yet he was conscious not so much of fear as of wariness, as if he were a savage on a mission in a concrete jungle, traveling along the bottoms of perilously wailed, rectilineal gorges.
No one spoke of the race, but outraged sportsmanship glinted perilously in every eye.
The bloodstone ring wriggled on his mud-slick finger and came perilously close to slipping off.
The damoclean sword of use and abuse forever swung perilously over the collective head of mankind.
A gate had been unlocked--not, indeed, the Ultimate Gate, but one leading from Earth and time to that extension of Earth which is outside time, and from which in turn the Ultimate Gate leads fearsomely and perilously to the last Void which is outside all earths, all universes, and all matter.
Five nuclear-tipped submunitions exploded perilously close to Aethra, reducing the latest attacking combat wasp to its subatomic constituents.
Then he added something that caused Talis to hang even more perilously out the window, trying to hear.
As the car moved away a pram, several suitcases and a cot swayed perilously on the roof, the children yelled, the dogs barked, the baby bawled, then they were gone.
There had been times, men said, that his family had brought forth baresarks and Biarki was perilously near that uncaring mania at the moment.
Already the time limit was getting perilously close, and the contractors did not doubt that their rivals were only waiting for a chance to step in and take their places.
Merritt came up behind him and stood beside him as they waited for one of the lumbering, perilously loaded oxcarts to make its way past and enter the tortuous downward road to the plateau by the dam.