precarity

noun

pre·​car·​i·​ty pri-ˈker-ə-tē 

: the state or condition of being precarious : precariousness

The older brother—Dave—raises the younger one, a responsibility that gives him a perpetual sense of life's urgency and precarity.

—Paul Elie

Job precarity can add to a number of social and economic challenges facing millennials including rising personal debts, growing costs of living, shrinking access to pensions and lower retirement savings.

—Arif Jetha

Examples of precarity in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

More often, though, Tallent demonstrates his characters’ precarity rather than declaiming about it. —Los Angeles Times, 20 Jan. 2026

The result is silence enforced by precarity. —Christine Villabona-Kuntz, New York Daily News, 19 Jan. 2026

But physical security can coincide with existential precarity. —Thomas Chatterton Williams, The Atlantic, 19 Jan. 2026

The museum is the latest of many US arts institutions whose employees have unionized in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis, which brought to the fore issues such as pay disparity, job precarity, and a lack of insurance. —News Desk, Artforum, 17 Jan. 2026

Word History

Etymology

probably borrowed from French précarité, from précaire "granted or exercised only with the permission of another, insecure, uncertain" (going back to Middle French, borrowed from Latin precārius "given as a favor, uncertain, precarious") + -ité -ity

First Known Use

1910, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for precarity

• alterity
• asperity
• austerity
• celerity
• dexterity
• disparity
• hilarity
• molarity
• planarity
• polarity
• posterity
• prosperity