Other forms: predicaments
A predicament is a bad spot you cannot easily get out of. The keys are locked in the car, the spare set is in the house, and the house key is on the same ring.
A predicament is the situation itself, not the feeling about it. You are in a predicament, you find yourself in one, you get a friend out of theirs. It sits close to dilemma, but a dilemma is a choice between two options and a predicament is simply a mess, sometimes with no choice in it at all. It takes the adjectives awkward, difficult, tricky and unfortunate, and the verbs be in, get into and land someone in. Notice the dic in the middle, the same three letters as in predict, because that is where the word comes from.
1nounpredicamentA difficult, awkward situation that is hard to get out of.
“By midnight he had explained his predicament to three different taxi drivers.”
predicament is a difficult situation.
Also accepted in games: dilemma
Latin praedicāmentum meant a category: the class you put a thing into when you say what it is. It reached English through Old French and Middle English as a term from logic, one of the boxes a philosopher sorts the world into. Then the meaning slid from the class you are put in to the state you are in, and from there to the awkward state you would rather be out of. The dic in the middle belongs to the same family as predict, a root about saying and declaring.
Proto-Indo-European
*deyḱ-
Latin
praedicāmentum — that which is predicated, a predicament, category
Old French
predicament
Middle English
predicament
English, today
predicament
From Middle English predicament, from Old French predicament, from Latin praedicāmentum (“that which is predicated, a predicament, category”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA