How to Use parlous in a Sentence

parlous

adjective

• He talked about the parlous state of the country.
• The company is in a parlous financial situation.
• In trouble is, for a kid, a parlous state, fraught with terror.
  — Kyle Smith, National Review, 9 Mar. 2021
• One day, while walking the dog, Joel weighed in on the parlous state of the federal minimum wage.
  — Belinda Luscombe, Time, 19 Feb. 2021
• And most people draw a straight line between Biden’s policies and the parlous state of the economy.
  — Matthew Continetti, National Review, 15 Oct. 2022
• On a visit to the Hasakah prison in 2019, The Washington Post found parlous conditions.
  — Washington Post, 23 Jan. 2022
• The pension system is not on the brink of bankruptcy, even if its finances over the medium term look parlous.
  — Roger Cohen, BostonGlobe.com, 20 Mar. 2023
• If nothing else, the Feb. 6 earthquake laid bare the parlous state of Syria under Mr. al-Assad.
  — Declan Walsh, New York Times, 16 Feb. 2023
• If nothing else, the Feb. 6 earthquake laid bare the parlous state of Syria under Assad.
  — Declan Walsh, BostonGlobe.com, 16 Feb. 2023
• Though their governance remains parlous, at least these banks are no longer able to hide the extent of their problems.
  — The Economist, 19 Apr. 2018
• Yemen and Syria among them, given the parlous state of their economies and health systems, and with many people already homeless.
  — Rosalind Mathieson, Bloomberg.com, 8 May 2020
• So, given its parlous financial state, how will the company pay for it?
  — David Meyer, Fortune, 6 Oct. 2021
• That leaves Britain’s Iran policy in a parlous position.
  — The Economist, 22 Aug. 2019
• To the rest of the world, however, the state of Indian democracy looks increasingly parlous.
  — Sadanand Dhume, WSJ, 15 Apr. 2021
• The parlous state of London’s prime central market, which began to decline in 2015, likely also played a role in this decision.
  — Ruth Bloomfield, WSJ, 26 Oct. 2017
• The stakes are especially high this year given the parlous state of the agricultural economy.
  — Shruti Singh, Bloomberg.com, 5 Apr. 2018
• His finances remained in a parlous state, and three years before his death this scourge of the Establishment solicited a government sinecure.
  — Martin Edwards, WSJ, 13 Aug. 2022
• As with so many mid-tier clubs in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, Sampdoria’s finances are parlous.
  — New York Times, 16 July 2021
• But what poses as unsentimental truth telling isn’t cynical enough about the parlous state of our privacy.
  — Jonathan Zittrain, The Atlantic, 7 Feb. 2020
• Any explanation has to begin with the parlous state of the official opposition to the Conservatives now in power.
  — Jonathan Freedland, The New York Review of Books, 16 Aug. 2018
• The state of American diplomacy was parlous, as the Nazis established a firm and apparently permanent foothold in most of Western Europe.
  — Ronald C. Rosbottom, WSJ, 15 Oct. 2021
• Numerous commentaries from both the political left and right have expounded the parlous state of the Democratic Party.
  — Joel Kotkin, Orange County Register, 5 Mar. 2017
• The parents have been forced, by uncertain but potentially parlous fetal test results, to abort their first pregnancy.
  — Claire Messud, Harpers Magazine, 5 Jan. 2021
• Movie-theater operator Cineworld is still in a parlous position.
  — Stephen Wilmot, WSJ, 24 Sep. 2020
• What’s already been laid bare is that Chelsea is unviable in its current form without the largesse of its billionaire patron, a reflection of a sport whose parlous finances would sink just about any other industry.
  — David Hellier, Bloomberg.com, 11 Mar. 2022
• Streaming’s cooler approach is badly timed for the indie film business, always a parlous proposition but especially now in the streaming chill.
  — David Bloom, Forbes, 23 Jan. 2023
• For women of color, especially black women, the situation is even more parlous.
  — Parul Sehgal, New York Times, 13 Mar. 2018
• To be sure, there is much room for debate as to the current state of American institutions: My particular hobby-horses here are the growing power of the presidency and the courts relative to Congress, and the parlous state of civic culture.
  — Max Bloom, National Review, 20 July 2017
• To complicate matters, at the film’s center the Dardennes place an amateur detective who doesn’t naturally belong to this parlous world.
  — Christian Lorentzen, New Republic, 4 Sep. 2017
• Ray Dalio, the billionaire hedge fund founder, said last year that the dollar’s privileged position as the world’s currency was more obviously being threatened by the parlous state of the country’s finances than by digital tokens.
  — Washington Post, 12 July 2019

Last Updated: 22 Oct 2024