Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use perilous in a sentence

19 example sentences · adjective

Perilous means dangerous, full of peril. Example: “According to my understanding, the situation is quite perilous. I wonder if you see it this way, too.”

Examples of perilous by meaning

adjectiveDangerous, full of peril.

  • Air travel is a perilous thing; just today, a stratosphere roc crashed head-on into a fragment of the sky and was killed with all its passengers.1963, Lester del Rey, The Sky Is Falling

More sentences with perilous

  • According to my understanding, the situation is quite perilous. I wonder if you see it this way, too.From the entry understanding
  • Their movements seem spastic in their capriciousness and perilous in their execution.2020, Jim Ruland, "Dreaming Underwater, Part Two: Incidents of Travel in Yucátan, Volume 666", Razorcake, December 2019 - January 2020…. From the entry Han Solo
  • Males hoping for acceptance must undergo a perilous rite de passage.1990, Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae. From the entry rite de passage
  • Father O’Neill’s station was one of the most perilous in the mission field.1945, Mark Tennien, Chungking Listening Post, New York: Creative Age Press, Inc., page 63. From the entry Toishan
  • Then it was seen how perilous was the situation of the Boer snipers. . . .1900, Arthur Conan Doyle, chapter 30, in The Great Boer War. From the entry wave the white flag
  • A council of cardinals was established to tackle key areas, notably the perilous state of the Vatican’s finances.2025 April 21, Peter Stanford, “Pope Francis obituary”, in The Guardian. From the entry coalface
  • The perilous porousness between our online and offline worlds is the spark for Nicolas Padamsee’s tinderbox thriller about two teenage boys.2024 April 27, Sana Goyal, “England Is Mine by Nicolas Padamsee review – battle lines are drawn”, in The Guardian. From the entry porousness
  • She convinces him to relinquish the perilous mission and settle down in matrimonial splendor and the jubilant pitter-patter of scampering gnomettes.2019, Ray Bussard, Gurgurtha: The Epic Quest, Lulu.com, →ISBN, page 164. From the entry gnomette
  • Though history could still be perilous, as the thud and blunder of Jean's own, lowercase, romance had proved.2012, Lillian Stewart Carl, The Blue Hackle, page 5. From the entry thud and blunder
  • This dusty, debris-laden zone is the most perilous passage.1990 August, Rick Gore, “Neptune: Voyager's Last Picture Show”, in National Geographic, volume 178, number 2, page 40. From the entry ring
  • THE SILK ROAD was actually a perilous network of routes.1984 January, Nina Hyde, “The Queen of Textiles”, in National Geographic, volume 165, number 1, page 30. From the entry Xi'an
  • When the crosslight turned green, silence was much less perilous.1972, Descant: The Texas Christian University Literary Journal. From the entry crosslight
  • Drivers traveling along westbound Interstate 70 on Tuesday saw a perilous scene when a semitruck was destroyed by flames on a runaway ramp.2024 January 5, Shaul Turner, “‘Nothing left’ of runaway semitruck after fire on I-70”, in KDVR, archived from the original on 27 Aug 2024. From the entry semitruck
  • Nothing short of an imperative sense of duty could tempt me to set forth on that most perilous emprise, a discussion of the American language.1900, William Archer, America To-Day, Observations & Reflections, page 181. From the entry emprise
  • It says much for their courage that they took that perilous choice rather than wave the white flag, which would have ensured their safety.1900, Arthur Conan Doyle, chapter 30, in The Great Boer War. From the entry wave the white flag
  • The seep lay high up among the ledges, vadose water dripping down the slick black rock and monkeyflower and deathcamas hanging in a small perilous garden.1985, Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, page 60. From the entry vadose
  • Beatrice Davis's office, a mere attic above Angus and Robertson's bookshop at 89 Castlereagh Street, is at the altaltissimo of a perilous steep of strait wooden stairs.1975, Hal Porter, The Extra, Melbourne: Thomas Nelson, →ISBN, page 87. From the entry altaltissimo
  • I sat at dinner, but satisfied myself with nibbling bread crusts, and witnessing the forlorn and perilous efforts of my friends to walk the line between starvation and acute indigestion.1914, Julian Hawthorne, chapter 13, in The Subterranean Brotherhood. From the entry walk the line

Meaning of perilous

  1. adjective Dangerous, full of peril.

Full definition of perilous

Questions about perilous in a sentence

How do you use perilous in a sentence?
Perilous is used as an adjective. For example: “According to my understanding, the situation is quite perilous. I wonder if you see it this way, too.”
What is a short sentence with perilous?
“This dusty, debris-laden zone is the most perilous passage.”
What does perilous mean?
Perilous means dangerous, full of peril.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: perilous (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use perilous in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/perilous. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.