Willa CatherShapeJohn Cichowski
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At first hazard was a game of chance played with dice. The English word comes from medieval French, in which the game was called hasard. This French word was probably borrowed from Arabic az-zahr, meaning “the dice” or “one of the dice.” The game was borrowed from the French by the English, and within a few centuries what had been a chance taken on the outcome of a throw of the dice could be any venture or risk. Now “chance” or “venture” and “risk” or “peril” are the usual meanings of hazard. The verb hazard emerged in the 16th century.
Synonyms
Examples of hazard in a Sentence
Amanda Loudin, San Diego Union-Tribune, 30 Apr. 2024
Exposure to elevated levels of inorganic arsenic can pose health hazards to people including cancer, birth defects, diabetes and heart issues, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has reported.
—USA TODAY, 30 Apr. 2024
Some areas of the thumb near the coast of Lake Huron are under watch for marine hazards into Monday.
—Jenna Prestininzi, Detroit Free Press, 28 Apr. 2024
Reviewing crash logs and data provided by Tesla, NHTSA found that drivers failed to brake or steer to avoid the hazard in a majority of the crashes analyzed.
—Andrew J. Hawkins, The Verge, 26 Apr. 2024
In the aftermath, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration opened the National Tsunami Warning Center in Alaska to monitor tsunami hazards.
—Christian Elliott, Smithsonian Magazine, 24 Apr. 2024
McNeill was cited for failing to provide proper protection from heat hazards, as well as not reporting the worker’s hospitalization within 24 hours and not reporting his death within eight hours.
—David J. Neal, Miami Herald, 22 Apr. 2024
These alerts notify users when a potential hazard is present.
—Ella Gonzales, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 22 Apr. 2024
While some sets are safe for children as young as 1 year old, most train sets contain small pieces, which can be choking hazards for young children.
—Laura Lu, Ms, Parents, 21 Apr. 2024
John Bacon, USA TODAY, 17 Jan. 2024
Unfortunately, none of the officials present hazarded a launch date.
—Eric Berger, Ars Technica, 23 June 2023
Still, newspapers had hazarded many guesses as to his real identity.
—Teresa Nowakowski, Smithsonian Magazine, 11 Oct. 2023
Goodman would not hazard a guess on the state of SAG-AFTRA’s negotiations, which began June 7.
—Cynthia Littleton, Variety, 21 June 2023
Food inflation is already significant, noted Daniel Sumner, a professor of agricultural and resource economics at UC Davis, and now prices will rise more, though Sumner and other analysts said there were simply too many factors to hazard a guess on how much.
—Kurtis Alexander, San Francisco Chronicle, 9 May 2023
Want to hazard a guess as to Trump’s lead over DeSantis (routinely second in these surveys)?
—Michael Tomasky, The New Republic, 20 Feb. 2023
Yi also hazards a few variations that are more systematic.
—Mark Jenkins, Washington Post, 17 Feb. 2023
Care to hazard a guess who picked which?
—Joey Capparella, Car and Driver, 10 June 2022
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'hazard.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Dictionary Entries Near hazard
Cite this Entry
“Hazard.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hazard. Accessed 3 May. 2024.
Copy CitationKids Definition
hazard
1 of 2 noun
hazard
2 of 2 verbNoun
Middle English hazard "game of chance," from early French hasard (same meaning), from Arabic az-zahr "the die (one of the dice)"
Legal Definition
hazard
noun
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