Perilled

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. To be positioned in an environment fraught with potential harm, facing circumstances that jeopardize safety, or encountering states of vulnerability that invite significant risk
2. Placed in a situation where harm or loss is likely to occur
3. Subjected to conditions that threaten safety or well-being

Etymology: "Perilled" is the past tense and past participle of "peril," so its history is the history of the verb's root noun. That noun came into Middle English from Old French "peril," which in turn descends from Latin "periculum," meaning trial, test or danger. The Latin word is itself a doublet of "periculum," a name that English speakers have only met through the Latin form in legal and classical texts, so the two entries show how one Latin word arrived by two routes. The Latin root reveals the core idea: a "periculum" was originally an experiment or trial, something you put yourself through to test a outcome, and only later came to mean the risk that such a trial carried. That shift from testing to threatening is what lies behind the modern sense of being exposed to harm.

Synonyms: endangered, threatened

Antonyms: safe, secure