The Collaborative International Dictionary
Precipitous \Pre*cip"i*tous\, a. [L. praeceps, -cipitis: cf. OF. precipiteux. See Precipice.]
Steep, like a precipice; as, a precipitous cliff or mountain.
Headlong; as, precipitous fall.
Hasty; rash; quick; sudden; precipitate; as, precipitous attempts.
--Sir T. Browne. ``Marian's low, precipitous `Hush!'''
--Mrs. Browning. [1913 Webster] -- Pre*cip"i*tous*ly, adv. -- Pre*cip"i*tous*ness, n.
Wiktionary
adv. abruptly; in a precipitous manner
WordNet
adv. very suddenly and to a great degree; "conditions that precipitously increase the birthrate"; "prices rose sharply" [syn: sharply]
abruptly; in a precipitous manner; "the mountains rose precipitously from the shore"
Usage examples of "precipitously".
Alfar Mountains the ground fell precipitously into a jumble of foothills and river valleys.
With their help they wrenched the wagon around, although it was a tricky business on the narrow road, with the land falling away steeply on one side and rising precipitously on the other.
At the fringe of the gathered assembly, right where the rock dropped precipitously away to the sea on its steepest side, his human allies huddled.
Those sides loom up so darkly and precipitously that one wishes they would keep their distance, but there is no road by which to escape them.
Tomb whose shadowy shaft sinks precipitously for fiftythree feet to a sinister sarcophagus which one of our camel drivers divested of the cumbering sand after a vertiginous descent by rope.
The landscape abruptly skidded to the left and the fieldpiece tipped precipitously, then righted, Barbousse swearing under his breath.
Baldwin had vacated so precipitously, the hapless Nevell had found a slower if no less painful way of ending his life.
The other side dropped off precipitously in a jungle of serviceberry and oakbrush.
I explained as quickly as possible how my putting excess order into the chairs for the subprefect had disrupted Gallos and forced me to leave precipitously.
Of all the crooners of that era, none has vanished so utterly and so precipitously as Dean Martin.
Traffic raced around on monorails or in the air, rising and falling several hundred feet precipitously in no discernible pattern.
The trail plunged precipitously out of the mountains, seeming to Jaryd even steeper than the route he and Baden had taken into the great city from the west, before the Midsummer Gathering.
But as Registration Agencies proliferate, competition is bound to slash these prices precipitously.
He wagged his gun, indicating that Andrej should sit, which the old man did, collapsing slowly and precipitously into the far corner.
The floor was a series of flat stones slightly raised from a stream of black, purling water that appeared to drop off precipitously on both sides before the curving stone walls rose to meet in a kind of gothically arched ceiling.