Les dictionnaires
Difficultés anglaises

> precipitate and precipitous precipitate and precipitous are liable to be confused. Precipitate as an adjective means "violently" hurried", as in "When the thief saw the policeman he made a precipitate dash from the room", "sudden", as in "Her precipitate disappearance from the firm", and "rash, impulsive", as in "We thought his action in leaving the firm was rather precipitate". Precipitous means "very steep, like a precipice", as in "It was almost impossible to climb the precipitous slope". Precipitate is also a verb meaning to cause something to happen suddenly or sooner than expected, to hasten", as in "His setting fire to the bicycle shed precipitated his expulsion from the school", or "to throw", as in "His sudden departure precipitated the whole office into a state of confusion". In the pronunciation of both the verb and the adjective, the emphasis is on the second syllable, but in the case of the verb the last syllable rhymes with "gate" whereas in the case of the adjective the last syllable is pronounced to rhyme with "hat". Thus the pronunciation of the adjective is pri-sip-i-tat, and that of the verb pri-sip-it-ayt. Pour éviter fautes de grammaire, contresens et confusions. The English Usage Dictionary est le parfait complément des dictionnaires bilingues, du dictionnaire de définitions anglaises et du Thesaurus. Ce dictionnaire signale toutes les difficultés que recèle l'usage d'un mot: orthographe, grammaire, prononciation, homonymies, etc. Exemple d'article du dictionnaire English Usage Dictionary