PRECIPITOUS

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IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does precipitous mean? 

• PRECIPITOUS (adjective)
  The adjective PRECIPITOUS has 2 senses:

1. done with very great haste and without due deliberation

2. extremely steep

  Familiarity information: PRECIPITOUS used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PRECIPITOUS (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Done with very great haste and without due deliberation

Synonyms:

hasty; overhasty; precipitant; precipitate; precipitous

Context example:

wondered whether they had been rather precipitate in deposing the king

Similar:

hurried (moving rapidly or performed quickly or in great haste)

Derivation:

precipitousness (the quality of happening with headlong haste or without warning)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Extremely steep

Synonyms:

abrupt; precipitous; sharp

Context example:

a sharp drop

Similar:

steep (having a sharp inclination)

Derivation:

precipice (a very steep cliff)

precipitousness (the property possessed by a slope that is very steep)

 Context examples 

The wall was absolutely precipitous, as was that which faced me.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

She continued her course along the precipitous sides of the river, when suddenly her foot slipped, and she fell into the rapid stream.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Beyond that the hills become precipitous.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Several minutes later, rounding a turn in the trail where the descent was less precipitous, he joined them in the midst of a miniature avalanche of pebbles and loose soil.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

Where the river swung in against precipitous bluffs, he climbed the high mountains behind.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

Here debauched a deep gorge, with precipitous, volcanic walls which no man could scale.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Then, too, she loved nature, and with generous imagination he changed the scene of their reading—sometimes they read in closed-in valleys with precipitous walls, or in high mountain meadows, and, again, down by the gray sand-dunes with a wreath of billows at their feet, or afar on some volcanic tropic isle where waterfalls descended and became mist, reaching the sea in vapor veils that swayed and shivered to every vagrant wisp of wind.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

The ascent is precipitous, but the path is cut into continual and short windings, which enable you to surmount the perpendicularity of the mountain.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)