Parlous, Perilous...

[jochen stremmel]

ORIGIN late Middle English: contraction of perilous.

British Thesaurus:
parlous
adjective
archaic or humorous the parlous state of the industry: bad, dire, dreadful,
awful, terrible, appalling, frightful, grave, serious, desperate,
precarious, uncertain, touch-and-go, difficult, unsafe, perilous,
dangerous, risky; pitiful, wretched, sorry, poor, lamentable, woeful,
hopeless; informal dicey, hairy, lousy; Brit. informal dodgy, chronic.


2014-12-22 16:57 GMT+01:00 David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>:

> Let's call the whole thing off?
>
> A NYT editorial [
> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/world/asia/chinese-annoyance-with-north-korea-bubbles-to-the-surface.html
> ] this weekend used this phrase:
>
> "....The parlous state of the relationship between North Korea and China
> was on display again Wednesday when Pyongyang commemorated the third
> anniversary of the death of Kim Jong-il, the father of the current leader,
> Kim Jong-un, and failed to invite a senior Chinese official."
>
> I'm not familiar with "parlous."  Is it reall just the same word,
> different spelling, as "perilous?"
> David Morris
>
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