PRECIPICE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does precipice mean? 

• PRECIPICE (noun)
  The noun PRECIPICE has 1 sense:

1. a very steep cliff

  Familiarity information: PRECIPICE used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PRECIPICE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A very steep cliff

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made)

Hypernyms ("precipice" is a kind of...):

cliff; drop; drop-off (a steep high face of rock)

Derivation:

precipitous (extremely steep)

 Context examples 

Then, with a frightful heave they shot the poor wretch over the precipice.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The castle is on the very edge of a terrible precipice.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

I had found sublimity and wonder in the dread heights and precipices, in the roaring torrents, and the wastes of ice and snow; but as yet, they had taught me nothing else.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Ruined castles hanging on the precipices of piny mountains, the impetuous Arve, and cottages every here and there peeping forth from among the trees formed a scene of singular beauty.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

The trail wasn't three feet wide on the crest, and on either side the ridge fell away in precipices hundreds of feet deep.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

And when they looked round they found that they had been sleeping quite close to a precipice, and would certainly have fallen into it in the darkness if they had gone only a few paces further.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

Through this wild country it was that Sir Nigel and his Company pushed their way, riding at times through vast defiles where the brown, gnarled cliffs shot up on either side of them, and the sky was but a long winding blue slit between the clustering lines of box which fringed the lips of the precipices; or, again leading their horses along the narrow and rocky paths worn by the muleteers upon the edges of the chasm, where under their very elbows they could see the white streak which marked the gave which foamed a thousand feet below them.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

So clearly could one see cañon, gorge, and precipice, and the shadows that lie therein, that one looked unconsciously for the white surf-line and bellowing caverns where the sea charges on the land.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Before us, over the tree-tops, we beheld the Cape of the Woods fringed with surf; behind, we not only looked down upon the anchorage and Skeleton Island, but saw—clear across the spit and the eastern lowlands—a great field of open sea upon the east. Sheer above us rose the Spyglass, here dotted with single pines, there black with precipices.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

This flapper is likewise employed diligently to attend his master in his walks, and upon occasion to give him a soft flap on his eyes; because he is always so wrapped up in cogitation, that he is in manifest danger of falling down every precipice, and bouncing his head against every post; and in the streets, of justling others, or being justled himself into the kennel.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)