hazard

Pluralhazards (some meanings)

Formshazards, hazarding, hazarded

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The possibility of suffering harm or loss; danger or peril.

   Sailors of the age accepted constant hazard as part of life at sea.

   The investors weighed the hazard of losing their entire stake.

   Similardanger, peril, risk, jeopardy

   Oppositesafety, security

   Note

   Two prepositional phrases carry much of this sense's older life. At the hazard of names what is put in danger (he met the enemy at the hazard of his reputation and life). On the hazard describes a state of things, as in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: "The storm is up and all is on the hazard." The noun can also name a condition one lives in, as when John Rogers writes of "a condition of the utmost hazard."

2. 2
   nouncountable

   An obstacle or other feature that creates a risk of harm, whether on a sports field or in everyday surroundings.

   The crumbling guardrail was a serious hazard to drivers on the mountain road.

   Inspectors flagged the exposed wiring as a dangerous hazard.

   Similardanger, risk, menace, threat, pitfall

3. 3
   verbtransitive

   To put something at risk; to venture, incur, or bring it on.

   She refused to hazard her reputation on an unproven claim.

   Few investors will hazard large sums during a downturn.

   Similarrisk, jeopardize, endanger, gamble, stake

   Oppositeprotect, safeguard

   Note

   Here the object can be the misfortune itself. In The Comedy of Errors, Shakespeare's "I hazarded the loss of whom I loved" risks the loss, not the person. Landor in 1824 even gives the verb an infinitive, "they hazard to cut their feet," meaning they run that risk. The everyday survivor is hazard a guess, where venturing has replaced danger.

4. 4
   verbtransitive

   To expose something to chance; to take a risk or venture a guess.

   Let me hazard a guess at what caused the delay.

   Critics hazard predictions about the election every week.

   Similarventure, offer, risk, attempt, make

   Note

   The verb puts something in harm's way, and older English liked to name what it was exposed to: Thomas Fuller in 1642 writes of a man who "hazards his neck to the halter." The object is what could be lost, whether a neck or, in John Clarke's "you hazard nothing," nothing at all. When the object is the bad outcome itself, the verb has moved to its sense of incurring.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A sand bunker or water feature on a golf course that obstructs play.

   She laid up short to avoid the hazard guarding the eighteenth green.

   A well-placed hazard forces golfers to choose between risk and caution.

   Note

   Golf narrows the general obstacle sense to two kinds of trouble: sand and water. A golf hazard is a designated part of the course, not just anything awkward in the way. Special rules restrict how a player may ground the club or move the ball inside one. Golfers speak of finding a hazard, carrying it, or laying up short of it.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   An obstacle or road feature that creates enough risk to justify a driver taking action to avoid it.

   Defensive drivers scan the road constantly for any developing hazard.

   A pedestrian stepping off the curb counts as a hazard requiring an immediate response.

   Similardanger, risk, obstacle

   Note

   Driver training has built a working vocabulary on this sense: hazard detection, hazard perception, and hazard perception tests, in which learners must react quickly to hazards in traffic scenarios. What makes something a hazard here is the response it demands. Anything that should make a competent driver slow, steer or stop qualifies, whether it is a pedestrian at the curb or a sudden change in the road.

7. 7
   nouncountable

   A problem in a CPU's instruction pipeline where the next instruction cannot execute in the following clock cycle, possibly causing incorrect results.

   The compiler inserts a stall to resolve the hazard before the result is needed.

   Pipeline designers add forwarding logic to avoid each hazard between dependent instructions.

   Note

   Chip designers sort these into families by cause. A data hazard arises when an instruction needs a result not yet computed. A control hazard comes from branches, and a structural hazard occurs when two instructions want the same hardware at once. The usual phrases are pipeline hazard and data hazard. A hazard is detected first, then resolved by stalling or forwarding.

8. 8
   nouncountable

   In billiards, the act of potting a ball: either the object ball, called a winning hazard, or the player's own ball, a losing hazard.

   The player completed the break with a precise hazard off the red.

   An accidental hazard sent his own ball into the pocket, costing him points.

   Similarpot

   Note

   Billiards uses the word for a scoring stroke, and its two adjectives mislead newcomers. Winning and losing describe which ball drops into the pocket, not how the shot turns out for the player. Under traditional rules both kinds of hazard score, though differently, so a losing hazard can be a perfectly good shot.

9. 9
   nounhistoricaluncountable

   A game of chance played with dice, usually for money, popular mainly from the 14th to the 19th century.

   The gentlemen gathered around the table for a night of hazard.

   [T]here's Harry diets himself—for gaming and is now under a hazard Regimen.

   1777, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The School for Scandal

   Note

   The game the whole word comes from: Old French hasart meant "a game of dice," from Arabic az-zahr, "the dice," the same source as Spanish and Portuguese azar. The senses of danger and risk grew from the gaming table. The game's name takes no article: men played hazard and lost at hazard. Thackeray already writes of it as a memory, the game young men played "in Mr. Fox's time."

10. 10
    noununcountable

    Chance; the play of fortune or accident in how things turn out.

    By mere hazard, the two travelers chose the same inn.

    She trusted nothing to hazard, planning every detail in advance.

    Similarchance, luck, accident, fortune, coincidence

    Oppositedesign

    Note

    Pure chance, and in Shakespeare's Richard III the dice still show through: "I will stand the hazard of the die." The sense is not confined to old texts. In The Guardian in 2006, John Patterson writes of animated films reflecting reality "by hazard or design." That pairing with design is a natural setting for the word today.

11. 11
    nounusually singular

    In court tennis, also called real tennis, the half of the court that receives the serve.

    A good serve drops sharply into the corner of the hazard.

    He moved up to defend the hazard after serving.

    Note

    This is real tennis, the old court game, rather than lawn tennis. Its court has two named halves: the service side, from which the ball is served, and the hazard side, which receives it. Players say the hazard side or simply the hazard, and this receiving half contains several scoring openings.

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