- venture
- venture vb Venture, hazard, risk, chance, jeopardize, endanger, imperil can all mean to expose to the chance of being unsuccessful, lost, or injured.Venture implies a daring to stake something (as the success of an action or undertaking, one's life, or one's property)on the chance of getting an advantage or gain whether great or small; the term implies only the chances taken and the contingencies foreseen and does not, apart from the context, indicate its outcome{
he determined to venture his life and his fortunes for the cause of freedom
}{you have deeply ventured; but all must do so who would greatly win— Byron
}But venture is often used in a weakened sense to mean little more than dare or, sometimes, attempt{imagine the fate of a university don of 1860, or 1870, or 1880, or even 1890 who had ventured to commend Leaves of Grass to the young gentlemen— Mencken
}{his class fellows were all rather gloomily polite to him, and one or two ventured awkward words of condolence— Archibald Marshall
}Hazard usually implies the putting of something to the chance of losing it; the term suggests more uncertainty or precariousness than venture and less hope of a favorable outcome and is often used in place of venture because of this implication{men that hazard all do it in hope of fair advantages— Shak.
}{his own possessions, safety, life, he would have hazarded for Lucie and her child, without a moment's demur— Dickens
}Like venture, hazard is also often used in a much weaker sense but it comes closer to dare than to attempt{sometimes as he hunted he got a glimpse of the giraffe moving through the bush, but was never near enough to hazard a shot— Cloete
}{no Elizabethan dramatist offers greater temptation: to the scholar, to hazard conjecture of fact; and to the critic, to hazard conjecture of significance— T. S. Eliot
}Risk carries a still stronger implication of exposure to real dangers and of taking actual chances{Captain Cook had sailed straight through the middle of the group, not risking a landing because of the fierce aspect of the natives— Heiser
}Chance may suggest a trusting to luck and a sometimes irresponsible disregarding of the risks involved in an action or procedure{decided to withdraw from Kentucky rather than chance defeat in enemy territory— Hay
}{I'll chance it, if it kills me
}Jeopardize carries further the implication of exposure to dangers; it implies not only that they are a constant threat but that the odds in one's favor are equally or even unfavorably balanced with those against one{found it difficult to steer a course that should not jeopardize either his loyalty or his honesty— Sidney Lee
}{no traveler from abroad, however fair-minded, could tell the truth about us without jeopardizing his life, liberty, and reputation— Brooks
}Endanger and imperil both stress exposure to dangers or perils, and do not in themselves throw emphasis upon a taking of chances. Imperil may imply more certainty or more imminence to the predicted risk than endanger but the two words are often used interchangeably without significant loss{not so great a wind as to endanger us— Defoe
}{condemned the abolitionists as agitators who actually endangered the cause of freedom— Cole
}{a jungle of aggressive power politics which imperils internal reconversion, the healing of the wounds of war, and the creation of the political apparatus necessary for one world— Mark Starr
}{new technical processes and devices litter the countryside with waste and refuse, contaminate water and air, imperil wildlife and man and endanger the balance of nature itself— Kennedy
}
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.