counterpoise

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

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 7, 2023

We can counterpoise that to the pediatric possessive: “You’re going to take your bath,” “It’s time for your nap.”

From The New Yorker ● May 13, 2019

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

Equilibrium is first secured, then 3-5 of a pound is taken from the counterpoise.

From Mysterious Psychic Forces An Account of the Author's Investigations in Psychical Research, Together with Those of Other European Savants by Camille Flammarion

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

The bed, on a low plinth, is counterpoised with a 19th-century Italian settee, and the angles of a Flavin fluorescent work echo the cast-iron windows overlooking Mercer Street.

From New York Times ● Dec. 9, 2019

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

Their tall, angular figures, made up of so much wing, leg, neck, and bill, counterpoised by so little body, incline the spectator to look upon them as ornithological caricatures.

From Four Months in a Sneak-Box by Nathaniel H. (Nathaniel Holmes) Bishop

Attached to the suspending machinery are two counterpoising weights, which being less heavy than the waggon laden with coal, do not impede its descent.

From A Yacht Voyage Round England by William Henry Giles Kingston

This was usually done on the pretense of picking up the counterpoising weight which had been purposely left on the ground.

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

But that Fierceness and Strength, Sweetness and Selflessness, have only intensified as, with further evolution, they have extended further into Life and Consciousness, is shown when they tear themselves asunder from their counterpoising attributes.

From Feminism and Sex-Extinction by Arabella Kenealy

Tested in this way, a body would, of course, weigh precisely the same anywhere; for if the gravitation of the body is altered, so is also in equal proportion the gravitation of the counterpoising weights.

From The Story of the Heavens by Sir Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball

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