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

Contemporary sociology invites us, perhaps rightly, to extend the traditional concept to include the working-class experience of deindustrialization and the precarity of the white-collar knowledge worker denied a secure job. —Nikhil Krishnan, New Yorker, 31 Mar. 2025

The most successful domestic noir and psychological thrillers of recent years have tackled universal anxieties: housing insecurity, financial precarity, isolation in the digital age, the fragility of relationships. —Jd Barker, Rolling Stone, 21 Mar. 2025

These are babies born into uncertainty, children whose futures will be marked by legal precarity and exclusion simply because of their parents’ immigration status. —Paola Mendoza, TIME, 24 Jan. 2025

Unfortunately, its expiration in 2022 cast just as many back into economic precarity. —Andrew Leahey, Forbes, 19 Mar. 2025

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