Word of the Day for Tuesday December 3, 2002

parlous \PAR-luhs\, adjective: Attended with peril; fraught with danger; hazardous.

It was a parlous time on the Continent, when Communists and fascists vied brutally for supremacy.
--Howard Simons, "Shots Seen Round the World," [1] New York Times, September 22, 1985

Parlous derives from Old French perillous, perilleus, from Latin periculosus, adjective form of periculum, "peril, danger, hazard."