COUNTERPOISE • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Counterpoise

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verb

Counterpoise v. t. (past & past part. counterpoised; pres. part. counterpoising)

To act against with equal weight; to equal in weight; to balance the weight of; to counterbalance. "Weights, counterpoising one another."

To act against with equal power; to balance. "So many freeholders of English will be able to beard and counterpoise the rest."

noun

Counterpoise n.

A weight sufficient to balance another, as in the opposite scale of a balance; an equal weight. "Fastening that to our exact balance, we put a metalline counterpoise into the opposite scale."

An equal power or force acting in opposition; a force sufficient to balance another force. "The second nobles are a counterpoise to the higher nobility, that they grow not too potent."

The relation of two weights or forces which balance each other; equilibrium; equiponderance. "The pendulous round eart, with balanced air, In counterpoise."

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Etymology of 'Counterpoise'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Counterpoise" Quotes from Famous Books

... heard in a more organised way. It was at the house of his father-in-law at Rheinfeld that he, Hans Kleist, and Herr von Below determined to call together a meeting of well-known men in Berlin, who should discuss the situation and be a moral counterpoise to the meetings of the National Assembly; for in that the Conservative party and even the Moderate Liberals were scarcely represented; if they did speak they were threatened by the mob which encumbered the approaches to the House. Of more permanent importance was the foundation ...

— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam

... water the only test, in some parts of Germany the triers, less philosophically, employed scales; and had fixed weights (from 14 to 15 lbs.), which, if the accused did not counterpoise, they concluded them to be possessed. But it will be asked, how can there be degrees of philosophy in practices equally insane, and which have been condemned by the common consent of enlightened nations for near three hundred years? Insanity there certainly ...

— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... saw it, for she said mournfully: 'Now I have done all I could! I felt that the only counterpoise to my cruelty to you in my drawing-room would be to come as ...

— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy

... be, she was not without prudence as a housekeeper; and as far as she could command her inconstant temper, she made home attractive to her husband. But neither of them had the weight of character to act as a counterpoise to the vacillation of the other. It was not a sun and a planet, the one wheeling about the other, nor yet were they double stars, revolving about a centre common to both; their movements were like nothing so much as ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... the theory had its use. For this high dignity of man, thus bringing the dust under his feet into sensible communion with the thoughts and affections of the angels, was supposed to belong to him, not as renewed by a religious system, but by his own natural right. The proclamation of it was a counterpoise to the increasing tendency of medieval religion to depreciate man's nature, to sacrifice this or that element in it, to make it ashamed of itself, to keep the degrading or painful accidents of it always in view. It helped man onward to that ...

— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater

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