TREACHEROUS

Pronunciation (US): (GB):

I. (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Tending to betray; especially having a treacherous character as attributed to the Carthaginians by the Romans

Example:

treacherous intrigues

Synonyms:

perfidious; punic; treacherous

Classified under:

Adjectives

Similar:

unfaithful (not true to duty or obligation or promises)

Derivation:

treachery (an act of deliberate betrayal)

treachery (betrayal of a trust)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Dangerously unstable and unpredictable

Example:

an unreliable trestle

Synonyms:

treacherous; unreliable

Classified under:

Adjectives

Similar:

dangerous; unsafe (involving or causing danger or risk; liable to hurt or harm)

Credits

Context examples:

However, the study also indicates that, as time wore on, the ivory came from smaller animals, often female; with genetic and archaeological evidence suggesting they were sourced from ever farther north – meaning longer and more treacherous hunting voyages for less reward.

(Over-hunting walruses contributed to the collapse of Norse Greenland, University of Cambridge)

Felix soon learned that the treacherous Turk, for whom he and his family endured such unheard-of oppression, on discovering that his deliverer was thus reduced to poverty and ruin, became a traitor to good feeling and honour and had quitted Italy with his daughter, insultingly sending Felix a pittance of money to aid him, as he said, in some plan of future maintenance.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

The reverence that I had for his grey head, was mingled with commiseration for his faith in those who were treacherous to him, and with resentment against those who injured him.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

He seemed under no apprehension, though he must have known that his life, among these treacherous demons, depended on a hair; and he rattled on to his patients as if he were paying an ordinary professional visit in a quiet English family.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Mr. Crawford was no longer the Mr. Crawford who, as the clandestine, insidious, treacherous admirer of Maria Bertram, had been her abhorrence, whom she had hated to see or to speak to, in whom she could believe no good quality to exist, and whose power, even of being agreeable, she had barely acknowledged.