parlous means attended with peril; dangerous, risky. It carries an Arena rating of 1668, earned across 3 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, parlous ranks #1,762 of 17,134 for Most Malleable Words, #2,642 of 17,131 for Scariest Words, #4,299 of 17,132 for Most Betrayed by Its Sound, #4,395 of 17,104 for Most Storied Words.
parlous is pronounced /ˈpɑːləs/.
Why “parlous” is a great word
Full of danger, risk, or uncertainty. From Middle English parlous, a contraction of perilous (itself from Old French perilleus, from Latin perīculōsus, "full of danger," from perīculum, "danger, risk"). Unlike "perilous"—its standard, unmarked parent—or "precarious" (which specifically suggests a teetering instability), parlous is an archaic variant edged with alarming cleverness. It is the rotting rope bridge swaying over a gorge, the gilded smile of a courtier whose loyalty is an unsheathed blade, or the tightrope walk of a diplomacy built on lies and bluffs—a word whose very compression hints that the greatest threats are those we have most cunningly engineered.
Etymology
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).
adj
- Attended with peril; dangerous, risky.e.g.“The situation became parlous when the weather made resupply impossible.”
- Appalling, dire, terrible.e.g.“in a parlous state”
- Dangerously clever or cunning; also, remarkably good or unusual.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Words closest in meaning
By meaning, not spelling — each word's AI semantic fingerprint, nearest first.