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counterpoise

[kaun-ter-poiz] / ˈkaʊn tərˌpɔɪz /


Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

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Molina, the embodiment of theatrical excellence, is perfectly cast as the rational counterpoise to Brady’s zealotry.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 7, 2023

Hope, Berger proposed, is what we counterpoise to the essential revelation of history—that we’ll decline, that we’ll die.

From The New Yorker ● Jan. 9, 2017

What Sofiya succeeds in doing in her novel is to counterpoise, to her husband’s inability to conjure love, her own utterly different vision.

From Slate ● Feb. 1, 2015

At times Bond acts as a counterpoise to Wanamaker's despair; at other times, as when she voices Eleanor's escalating insecurities, she brings her own tragic intensity to the role.

From The Guardian ● May 7, 2013

Sulla, however, had a counterpoise to any demerits of his own, in the still greater demerits of those who were opposed to him.

From The Comic History of Rome by Gilbert Abbott ? Becket

In a cluttered information age, where attention is a prized and scarce commodity, Nuzzi and Lizza—with their perfectly counterpoised surnames—have somehow broken through.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 6, 2025

The baby is not a metaphor, the narrator warns us, yet her wild, untrammeled, inscrutable being is everywhere counterpoised by the internet’s similarly enigmatic existence.

From New York Times ● Feb. 16, 2021

In the more lush musical passages, she counterpoised a subtle sense of freeze-framing, with the dancers halting momentarily so we could absorb the length and reach of their unfolding shapes.

From Washington Post ● Oct. 25, 2019

The drama of her grieving swoon is conveyed not by flourishes but by sobriety — broad, smooth, unadorned garments counterpoised with deep shadows cast in their folds.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 13, 2017

The float is attached to a delicate watch-chain, which passes over the wheel and is adequately counterpoised.

From A Treatise on Meteorological Instruments Explanatory of Their Scientific Principles, Method of Construction, and Practical Utility by Henry Negretti

Also, a counterpoising log of wood, rigged out from the side of a narrow boat or canoe, to prevent it from being upset.

From The Sailor's Word-Book An Alphabetical Digest of Nautical Terms, including Some More Especially Military and Scientific, but Useful to Seamen; as well as Archaisms of Early Voyagers, etc. by Sir Edward Belcher

The method of falsifying the balance was by loading the counterpoising weight with lead, and by filing the crosspiece that acts as fulcrum.

From The Manóbos of Mindanáo Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir by John M. Garvan

P. B. Luther and Ignatius Loyola.—A parallel or counterpoising view of these two characters has been quoted in several publications, some of recent date; but in all it is attributed to a wrong source.

From Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. by George Bell

He returns to his main thesis, and other counterpoising arguments occur to him.

From Plum Pudding Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned by Christopher Morley

Peace, as opposed to war, is a tremendous counterpoising of forces, and it simply means an organised resistance.

From Father Payne by Arthur Christopher Benson




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