insecure
Many people live in terror of economic insecurity.
The country is plagued by insecurity, with crime rampant.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Unsafe and insecure
appealingly
at stakeidiom
be on the lineidiom
day
indefensible
insecure
insecurely
instable
jeopardy
security breach
shaky
sketchy
someone's/something's days are numberedidiom
threat
threatened
unbalanced
unscreened
unsecured
unsound
unsupervised

insecurity | American Dictionary

insecurity
noun
us/ˌɪn·sɪˈkjʊər··t̬i/

insecuritynoun (FEELING OF NOT BEING SAFE)

[ U ]
a feeling of not being fixed or safe:
They experienced economic insecurity due to unemployment.

insecuritynoun (FEELING OF NOT BEING CONFIDENT)

[ C ]
a feeling of not being confident:
I think he's trying to deal with his fears and insecurities.

Examples of insecurity

insecurity
When children are old enough to understand the potential consequences of drug involvement, they must deal with the insecurity of possibly losing their parents.
To explore further the relationship between the socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents and insecurity, a binary logistic regression model was calibrated.
Rivalrous relationships are distinct from other dyadic associations inasmuch as violence exacerbates mutual insecurities that already run deep.
Given the development and growth of the welfare state, social security has become the main means of protecting individuals from poverty and insecurity.
These deficits in reflective function and awareness accompany feelings of relational insecurity, because such unresponsive caregiving also does not provide comfort or ameliorate distress.
Their sons migrated for reasons of economic hardship and personal insecurity following political harassment.
There is no hint that some scholars have questioned the methodology employed in identifying such notions as styles, networks, and linguistic insecurity.
Government reforms appear to be creating greater ontological insecurity, even among many of those who will ultimately receive means-tested benefits.
The issue is complex, controversial, and begs the question of who should have the authority to determine that conditions of insecurity have ceased.
Perhaps most interesting of all, however, are those cases of conflicting views on performance as opposed to insecurity.
Higher maternal depression was associated with higher insecurity.
It was speculation bred of insecurity and nurtured in ignorance.
Furthermore, imperial insecurity imposed new claims on his political loyalties, eliciting a qualitative change in his academic judgements.
The uncertainties and insecurities of freelancing continued whatever a person's age or experience.
He is also concerned about the insecurity of the world germ plasm resources, which are publicly funded but of value to industry.
See all examples of insecurity
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

Collocations withinsecurity

insecurity

These are words often used in combination with insecurity.

Click on a collocation to see more examples of it.

economic insecurity
Rural peoples pursue overlapping and redundant strategies as a hedge against economicinsecurity.
emotional insecurity
In turn, emotional insecurity is hypothesized to be associated with child psychological symptoms.
feeling of insecurity
Here there is a feelingofinsecurity.
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