Peril \Per"il\, n. [F. p['e]ril, fr. L. periculum, periclum, akin to peritus experienced, skilled, and E. fare. See {Fare}, and cf. {Experience}.] Danger; risk; hazard; jeopardy; exposure of person or property to injury, loss, or destruction.
In perils of waters, in perils of robbers. --2 Cor. xi. 26.
Adventure hard With peril great achieved. --Milton.
{At one's peril}, or {On one's peril}, with risk or danger to one; at the hazard of. ``On thy soul's peril.'' --Shak.
Syn: Hazard; risk; jeopardy. See {Danger}.
Peril \Per"il\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Periled}or {Perilled}; p. pr. & vb. n. {Periling} or {Perilling}.] To expose to danger; to hazard; to risk; as, to peril one's life.
Peril \Per"il\, v. i. To be in danger. [Obs.] --Milton.
Since Midas, perhaps since Adam, the consequences of risky business have been spurned to the peril of those who dare to pursue happiness a little too voraciously.
But some see peril in the scenario approach.
"It's heads I win, tails you lose because brave words notwithstanding, the peril of communal animosity is still not taken seriously.
Yet on this anniversary, what do we hear in America but new talk of a yellow peril?
Drexel has repeatedly said its junk-bond business is as strong as ever, and the firm says it isn't in any peril of slipping from the market.
L. Stanley Crane, the canny 71-year-old railroad veteran who led Consolidated Rail Corp. through a thousand mine fields to the private sector, now faces a new peril.
Winter is coming and the soul of our nation is in peril.
He said President Lyndon B. Johnson should tell the nation of the peril, and of his plans for the future.
A trade association says about 75 percent of the nation's 1990 winter wheat acreage has been put under multiple peril crop insurance protection, based on preliminary figures.
Yet, says an editorial in the American Journal of Public Health, murder is a vocational peril the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has failed to address.
Some cavers want their bodies to be buried beneath flat rocks to spare others the pain and peril of hauling them out.
We thought that we would be preserved from this peril.
The nasty, manipulative hack and hanger-on becomes more than an amusing contemptible devil; minor characters suddenly become major; depths of feeling and of more than social peril loom.
It is only when the woman next door is murdered that Stone twigs that her own life is in peril. The movie's main liability is its woeful script, written by Joe Eszterhas, who penned Basic Instinct, which at least possessed a certain tawdry momentum.
The Conservatives are committed to continuing and extending it: a government of any other complexion will abandon the principle at its peril.
The embassy issued a statement later saying Iran "condemned all actions of a nature to put innocent lives in peril." Both men said later that the public silence about the Western hostages in Lebanon did not help them.
In cinema, once the world's audiences have decided that an artist cannot grow up, he does so only at his own, possibly terminal peril.
Below its surface are plates of earth that slip and slide past each other with enough occasional fury to move mountains, flatten freeways and put lives and lifestyles in peril.
Your party fights for freedom in South Africa and that is right. But our party fights for freedom wherever it is in peril and wherever it is sought.
The recent action in Reebok International stock illustrates one peril faced by growth stock investors, namely trying to figure out what could go wrong.
If his regime crumbles, the nation is at peril of a possible Lebanon-style unraveling.
But the outcome of the battle also may determine the fate of an estimated 4 million people in northern Ethiopia in peril of starving to death in the next few months.
"They ignore it at their peril," he said.
"We ignore the religious element to our peril. `There is a profound sense of religious belief in our people" - Bishop Herbert Chilstrom, spiritual leader of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
In late 1974, S&P unaccountably upgraded its rating for New York City bonds from BBB to A, even though the city was clearly in financial peril.
Alerting hotel guests to the peril hasn't been easy either.
Anyone who adopts a psychological instrument for any use without careful study of existing research does so at considerable peril.
"Given the enormous momentum in the Earth's climate system, we delay response actions at our peril," said the report from the Climate Institute, a private group which seeks to coordinate interests of public and private researchers and officials.
"We turn away from this at our peril," Mr. Fazio said.
The peril for both the Kurds and Mr. Bush will linger on for weeks.