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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

parlous.

Attended with peril; dangerous, risky.

7 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adj/ˈpɑːləs/Received-Pronunciation/ˈpɑɹləs/General-American

  1. Attended with peril; dangerous, risky.

    The situation became parlous when the weather made resupply impossible.

  2. Appalling, dire, terrible.

    in a parlous state

  3. Dangerously clever or cunning; also, remarkably good or unusual.

    England · also · dialectal · obsolete · rare
Where this word comes from

From Middle English parles, parlous, perlous, [and other forms], a contraction of perilous (“dangerous; dreadful, terrible; morally corrupt, sinful, wicked; inauspicious, unlucky”) (and thus a doublet of perilous), from Old French perilleus, perillos, perillous, perilluse, perilleuse, perilleux (“very dangerous, perilous”) (modern French périlleux), from Latin perīculōsus (“dangerous, hazardous, perilous”), from perīculum (“danger, hazard, peril, risk”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *per- (“to go through, carry forth, try”)) + -ōsus (suffix meaning ‘full of, prone to’ forming adjectives).

adv/ˈpɑːləs/Received-Pronunciation/ˈpɑɹləs/General-American

  1. Extremely, very.

    archaic · not-comparable
Where this word comes from

From Middle English parles, parlous, perlous, [and other forms], a contraction of perilous (“dangerous; dreadful, terrible; morally corrupt, sinful, wicked; inauspicious, unlucky”) (and thus a doublet of perilous), from Old French perilleus, perillos, perillous, perilluse, perilleuse, perilleux (“very dangerous, perilous”) (modern French périlleux), from Latin perīculōsus (“dangerous, hazardous, perilous”), from perīculum (“danger, hazard, peril, risk”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *per- (“to go through, carry forth, try”)) + -ōsus (suffix meaning ‘full of, prone to’ forming adjectives).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.