precarious.

Not firmly supported or protected, and liable to fail or change suddenly.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• precarious employment
• precarious position

On the page

Precarious employment made long-term planning difficult.

Usage notes

Primary category: economics / business / social science. Forms: Comparative more precarious; superlative most precarious when comparison is meaningful. Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1 only. Use numbered sense fields for all meanings. Established modern English lexical item. No separate regional spelling or grammatical inflection entry. Writing functions: analysis, evaluation, business. Commonness: moderately common.