hazard

B2 · Upper Intermediate Countable noun Sports

n. an area on a golf course that is difficult to play out of, like a pond or a sand pit.

n. a permanent obstacle on a golf course, such as a bunker or a water feature, designed to increase the difficulty of play.

“His ball landed in a water hazard, so he had to take a penalty shot.”

“The course designer strategically placed sand hazards around the green to challenge even the most experienced professional golfers.”

C1 · Advanced Countable noun Computing Technical

n. a technical problem in a computer's processor that stops it from working correctly for a moment.

n. a condition in a CPU pipeline where the next instruction cannot execute in the following clock cycle due to data or control dependencies.

“The engineer had to fix a data hazard that was slowing down the processor.”

“Modern microarchitectures use complex forwarding logic to mitigate the performance impact of data hazards in the instruction pipeline.”

C2 · Proficiency Uncountable noun Archaic

n. a game of chance played with dice that was popular hundreds of years ago.

n. a gambling game played with two dice, popular from the medieval period through the 19th century.

“The characters in the old story spent their evenings playing hazard in the tavern.”

“In the eighteenth century, many aristocrats lost their family fortunes at the hazard tables of London's exclusive gaming clubs.”

C1 · Advanced Formal

v. to say something even though you know you might be wrong.

v. to venture or risk a statement or guess, often used in the polite phrase 'hazard a guess'.

“I would not dare to hazard a guess about who will win the election.”

“Few economists were willing to hazard a prediction regarding the long-term effects of the new trade policy.”