precipitously
advUS /pɹɪˈsɪ.pɪ.təs.li/
Etymology From precipitous + -ly.
› In a precipitous manner.
1
Abruptly; quickly.
- Population dropped to the lowest point in five millennia. State resources declined precipitously. In many strategic and formerly prosperous areas, there were tax revenue losses of 90 percent or more in less than a single lifetime.1988, Joseph Tainter, The Collapse of Complex Societies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 7:
2
At a sharp upwards angle.
- Never will I visit it again; it is a place of evil omen.' After a very brief halt for breakfast we pressed on with such good will that by two o'clock in the afternoon we were at the foot of the vast wall of rock that formed the lip of the volcano, and which at this point towered up precipitously above us for fifteen hundred or two thousand feet.1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:
- On all sides, wild mountains rise precipitously above wooded nullahs, and we have a clear view, to the right, of the famous Amah Rock, with its singular resemblance to a Chinese woman carrying her baby on her back in the traditional fashion.1954 October, 'Boscawen', “The Kowloon-Canton Railway of Today”, in Railway Magazine, page 712: