One way to hold this word: something goes over a high edge head first, and down it comes. Nothing about it is gentle or slow. There is no walking to the bottom, no warning, no chance to change your mind on the way. Everything else the word does keeps that one picture and only changes what is falling: a solid dropping out of a liquid, water dropping out of the sky, a town dropping into a crisis, a person dropping into a decision, a plan carried out by someone whose feet are already ahead of their thinking.
From the word’s history
Latin praecipitatus, from praeceps (head foremost, headlong): prae (before) + -ceps (headed). The literal sense is to send something down head first, which is still the picture inside every modern use.
拉丁文 praecipitatus 來自 praeceps（頭在前面），也就是 prae（在前）加上 -ceps（有頭的）。字面意思就是「讓某物頭朝前落下去」。今天每一個用法裡，都還看得到這個畫面。
Wiktionary etymology supplied in this packet (source_ref kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:578829953:38502)
登入就可以看每一支怎麼連回核心畫面。