Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A counterbalancing weight.
- n. A force or influence that balances or equally counteracts another.
- n. The state of being in equilibrium.
- v. To oppose with an equal weight; counterbalance.
- v. To act against with an equal force or power; offset.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A weight equal to and balancing or counteracting another weight; specifically, a body or mass of the same weight with another opposed to it, as in the opposite scale of a balance.
- n. Hence Any equal power or force acting in opposition; a force sufficient to balance another force.
- n. The state of being in equilibrium with another weight or force.
- n. In the manège, a position of the rider in which his body is duly balanced in his seat, not inclined more to one side than the other; equilibrium.
- To act in opposition to, or counteract, as a counterpoise; counterbalance; be equiponderant to; equal in weight.
- Hence To act against in any manner with equal power or effect; balance; restore the balance to.
Wiktionary
- n. A weight sufficient to balance another, as in the opposite scale of a balance; an equal weight.
- n. An equal power or force acting in opposition; a force sufficient to balance another force.
- n. The relation of two weights or forces which balance each other; equilibrium; equiponderance.
- v. To act against with equal weight; to equal in weight; to balance the weight of; to counterbalance.
- v. To act against with equal power; to balance.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To act against with equal weight; to equal in weight; to balance the weight of; to counterbalance.
- v. To act against with equal power; to balance.
- n. A weight sufficient to balance another, as in the opposite scale of a balance; an equal weight.
- n. An equal power or force acting in opposition; a force sufficient to balance another force.
- n. The relation of two weights or forces which balance each other; equilibrium; equiponderance.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a weight that balances another weight
- v. constitute a counterweight or counterbalance to
Etymologies
- From Old French contrepois, contrepeser, later assimilated to poise. (Wiktionary)
- Alteration (influenced by poise1) of Middle English countrepeis, from Old French contrepeis : contre-, counter- + peis, weight; see avoirdupois. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“He wandered about the glen and the hillside, but she took care never to fall in his way, the excitement of eluding him making a kind of counterpoise for the absence of the excitement there used to be in meeting him.”
“Hooking the RV or the chain link fence to the "counterpoise" probably doesn't do much to improve efficiency and should not be looked at as a substitute for a radial system.”
“To amuse himself with the little creations of his own fancy, amid the toil and fatigue of a laborious life; to transcribe the various feelings -- the loves, the griefs, the hopes, the fears -- in his own breast; to find some kind of counterpoise to the struggles of a world, always an alien scene, a task uncouth to the poetical mind -- these were his motives for courting the Muses, and in these he found poetry to be its own reward.”
“The Lebanese army, once touted as the counterpoise to Hizbullah, has become its proxy.”
“Like Noah Baumbach, Holofcener is a counterpoise to formulaic studio films, a highly stylized naturalist bringing us bulletins from the 21st century.”
The Huffington Post: Erica Abeel: INDIE STALWARTS AND NEW TALENT AT TRIBECA
“The “snow-white passages” and “beautiful fossils” in the nearby Mendip caves44 counterpoise a lecture on bird legends, in which the boys are told how the thieving blackbird got its black plumage and yellow beak, and—this appealed to him most—how the tiny wren defeated the eagle to become king of the birds.”
“It is however much, much less ugly, hateful and violent; and to try to counterpoise the two is a false equivalency.”
“I doubt that I will live long enough ever to see a movement develop which is sufficently self-possessed to be an authentic counterpoise.”
How Many Troops will Obama Withdraw from Iraq? « Antiwar.com Blog
“The numerous evidence of established credible eyewitnesses to either seeing or having been abducted by aliens, might counterpoise, to the effect that it is not a question of "belief", but a question of acknowledging documented evidence.”
9/11, the "War on Terror" and the architects of World War II
“Efforts by the left to claim Camus as one of theirs, which have been suspect and problematic to many all along, become even more so considering the fact that in the years prior to winning the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature his work was featured prominently in a publication funded by the US Central Intelligence Agency as part of their Cold War effort to counterpoise Kremlin-backed orthodox communist philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre.”
Eric Ehrmann: A New Year's Resolution for France- Put Albert Camus In The Pantheon
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘counterpoise’.
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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ADW1
obdurate, obstinate, behest, injunction, enjoin, circumspect, ensconce, discursive, lugubrious, doleful, somber, ken and 2476 more...
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Oh them words, them words
My fancies, my cudgels.
liquescent, ferly, lamia, basilisk, trigon, fantast, stirp, tristesse, enfleurage, stemma, formicary, lacrimation and 346 more...
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English
fastidious, flummoxed, fungible, galvanizing, graviats, hafvalla, hyperborean, idiolect, idiomatic, ignominious, immolated, impecunious and 398 more...
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Art Terms
mannerism, nonrepresentational, pointillism, serigraph, alla prima, trompe l'oeil, assemblage, arabesque, polychromatic, naive art, lumina, impasto and 104 more...
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jmjarmstrong's list
Words that I used to know.
geloscopy, hunker, willy nilly, harum scarum, whacko, meh, nork, misunderestimate, atrabiliousness, luftmensch, auxanometer, hyperhedonia and 1948 more...
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Literarie: The Tragedy of Coriolanus
A play by William Shakespeare.
sufferance, cram, garner, embracement, freelier, mammock, cambric, stitchery, cloven, murrain, manifest housekeeper, a crack'd drachma! and 88 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for counterpoise.
jmjarmstrong JM is constantly balancing counterpoise and counterpole and that's what counts. Jul 8, 2010
bilby "Our spoils we have brought home
Do more than counterpoise a full third part
The charges of the action."
- William Shakespeare, 'The Tragedy of Coriolanus'. Aug 29, 2009