precariousyoudaoicibaDictYouDict[precarious 词源字典]
precarious: [17] Precarious comes from Latin precārius (source also of English prayer), which meant ‘obtained by asking or praying’. It was originally used in English as a legal term, in which ‘obtained by asking’ had undergone a slight change in focus to ‘held through the favour of another’. This introduced the notion that the favour might be withdrawn, and that the possession was therefore uncertain, and so the adjective soon came to be used for ‘depending on chance or caprice’ and, in the 18th century, ‘risky’.

Latin precārius was derived from prex ‘prayer’, a close relative of precārī ‘ask, entreat, pray’, from which English gets pray.

=> pray[precarious etymology, precarious origin, 英语词源]
paronomasia (n.)youdaoicibaDictYouDict
"pun," 1570s, from Latin, from Greek paronomasia "play upon words which sound similarly," from paronomazein "to alter slightly, to call with slight change of name," literally "to name beside," from par- (see para- (1)) + onomasia "naming," from onoma "name" (see name (n.)).
paronym (n.)youdaoicibaDictYouDict
"cognate word," 1846, from Greek paronymos, "formed by a slight change," from para- (see para- (1)) + onyma (see name (n.)). Related: Paronymous (1660s).