adjective Resembling a precipice; extremely steep. See Synonyms at steep1.
adjective Having several precipices: a precipitous bluff.
adjectiveUsage Problem Extremely rapid, hasty, or abrupt; precipitate: "The change has included a precipitous collapse of Communist authority” (New York Times). See Usage Note at precipitate.
Headlong; descending rapidly, or rushing onward. The sweep Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave. Tennyson, Enoch Arden.
Steep; like a precipice; consisting of precipices: as, precipitous cliffs. Tangled swamps and deep precipitous dells. Shelley, Alastor.
Hasty; rash; precipitate. She [Nature] useth to act by due and orderly gradations, and takes no precipitous leaps from one extream to another. Glanville, Pre-existence of Souls, xiii.Thus framed for ill, he loosed our triple hold (Advice unsafe, precipitous, and bold). Dryden, The Medal, l. 65.
She was met with blank stares, so she tried again.
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The Witness
So precipitous was his move that he caught her off guard.
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The Unbearable Lightness of Being
His haste is precipitous, his choice distasteful to me.
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The Coelura
Men, stamping their boots and slapping their mittened hands against the cold, stared northwards at the heaped hills that were rocky, precipitous, and held by the enemy.
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Sharpe's Regiment
" I smile, thinking about his reflective letters, on yellow ruled paper, words written without margins, precipitous, as if they would have fallen right off the page without the adhesive structure of sentence.
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Songs of the Humpback Whale
from Old Frenchprecipiteux, Frenchprécipiteux = SpanishPortugueseItalianprecipitoso; as L. præceps (-cipit-), head foremost, headlong (see precipice), + -ous. Cf. precipitious.