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UNSAFE
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I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Involving or causing danger or risk; liable to hurt or harm
Example:
unemployment reached dangerous proportions
Synonyms:
dangerous; unsafe
Classified under:
Similar:
treacherous; unreliable (dangerously unstable and unpredictable)
self-destructive; suicidal (dangerous to yourself or your interests)
parlous; perilous; precarious; touch-and-go (fraught with danger)
on the hook (caught in a difficult or dangerous situation)
mordacious (biting or given to biting)
insidious (intended to entrap)
hazardous; risky; wild (involving risk or danger)
desperate ((of persons) dangerously reckless or violent as from urgency or despair)
chanceful; chancy; dicey; dodgy (of uncertain outcome; especially fraught with risk)
breakneck (moving at very high speed)
Also:
insecure; unsafe (lacking in security or safety)
vulnerable (susceptible to attack)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Lacking in security or safety
Example:
an insecure future
Synonyms:
insecure; unsafe
Classified under:
Similar:
precarious; shaky (not secure; beset with difficulties)
unguaranteed; unsecured (without financial security)
Also:
unprotected (lacking protection or defense)
dangerous; unsafe (involving or causing danger or risk; liable to hurt or harm)
vulnerable (susceptible to attack)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Not safe from attack
Synonyms:
insecure; unsafe
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
vulnerable (susceptible to attack)
Context examples:
The young people had been very inconsiderate in forming the plan; they ought to have been capable of a better decision themselves; but they were young; and, excepting Edmund, he believed, of unsteady characters; and with greater surprise, therefore, he must regard her acquiescence in their wrong measures, her countenance of their unsafe amusements, than that such measures and such amusements should have been suggested.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
Neither entreaty nor courtly remonstrance came from the English prince; but Sir Hugh Calverley passed silently over the border with his company, and the blazing walls of the two cities of Miranda and Puenta de la Reyna warned the unfaithful monarch that there were other metals besides gold, and that he was dealing with a man to whom it was unsafe to lie.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Diarrhoeal disease is the second leading cause of death in children under five years of age and is responsible for killing some 525,000 children every year, according to the WHO, while UNICEF says nearly 60 per cent of deaths due to diarrhoea worldwide are attributable to unsafe drinking water and poor hygiene and sanitation.
(Chlorine dispensers fitted to public taps cut child diarrhoea, SciDev.Net)
“Then pray let us turn back; they will certainly meet with an accident if we go on. Do let us turn back, Mr. Thorpe; stop and speak to my brother, and tell him how very unsafe it is.”
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
I replied, with all due deference to his experience (but with more deference, I am afraid, to his being Dora's father), that perhaps it was a little nonsensical that the Registry of that Court, containing the original wills of all persons leaving effects within the immense province of Canterbury, for three whole centuries, should be an accidental building, never designed for the purpose, leased by the registrars for their Own private emolument, unsafe, not even ascertained to be fire-proof, choked with the important documents it held, and positively, from the roof to the basement, a mercenary speculation of the registrars, who took great fees from the public, and crammed the public's wills away anyhow and anywhere, having no other object than to get rid of them cheaply.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
