parlously

Either plump to excess or excessively lean; either parlously young or portentously old; — the medium is mawkish. —

Peer Gynt 2008

Roger -- you are coming parlously close to trashing an entire genre, which I don't think you mean to do.

Cheering the Home Team Roger Sutton 2006

Either plump to excess or excessively lean; either parlously young or portentously old; — the medium is mawkish. —

Peer Gynt 2008

Wonky - Descriptive of an object tottering parlously in place.

The Talk In London - A New Yorker's Report from the Field 2006

Universal Service for Home Defence, but he casts no stone at those who so long and parlously delayed to learn their lesson.

Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 Various

These acts of lethal self-preservation prove conclusively that he knows who he is and that he fully realizes that his acts are parlously illegal.

Moral Deliberations in Modern Cinema Samuel Vaknin

And then she could control herself no longer, and was forced to smile, -- one of those broad mirthful smiles that are parlously near a laugh.

Too Old for Dolls A Novel 1926

She was directly opposite the Sheridan Building then, waiting for the traffic to thin before she crossed, though other people were risking the passage, darting and halting and dodging parlously.

The Turmoil 1915

They are professed, as I have already observed, by Christianity, but even the New Testament is not free from the idea that saints are having a bad time now but will hereafter enjoy a triumph, parlously like the exuberance of the wicked in this world.

Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 1 Charles Eliot 1896

For if the mind of a dog or chimpanzee contains no element which is immortal, the part of the human mind on which the claim to immortality can be based must be parlously small, since _ex hypothesi_ sensation, volition, desire and the simpler forms of intelligence are not immortal.

Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 1 Charles Eliot 1896