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Counterpoise   Listen
noun
Counterpoise  n.  
1.
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."
2.
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."
3.
The relation of two weights or forces which balance each other; equilibrium; equiponderance. "The pendulous round eart, with balanced air, In counterpoise."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Counterpoise" Quotes from Famous Books



... that great archipelago. [32] It is about one hundred leguas in circumference. Its climate is very hot, although the continual rains somewhat temper its unendurable heat. In its rains it exceeds all the other nearby islands. However this relief bears the counterpoise of making the island but little favorable to health, because of the bad consequences of the heat accompanied by the humidity. But for all that it is a very fertile land, although unequally so because of its rough mountain ranges, and the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various

... moderate labor, a family be maintained upon it with raiment, food, and shelter. The luxurious and minute comforts of a city life are not yet to be had without effort disproportionate to their value. But, where there is so great a counterpoise, cannot these be given up once for all? If the houses are imperfectly built, they can afford immense fires and plenty of covering; if they are small, who cares,—with, such fields to roam in? in winter, it may be borne; ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... nations. By this means they render much more decided the differences existing in the conditions of production; they check the self-levelling power of industry, prevent fusion of interests, neutralize the counterpoise, and fence in each nation within its own peculiar advantages ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat

... it is necessary to encourage trade and industry vigorously and especially speculation, the function of which is to act as a counterpoise to industry.... It is necessary for industry to deplete the land both of laborers and capital, and, through speculation, transfer all the money of the world into our hands, thereby throwing the Gentiles into the ranks ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein

... wars, massacres, crusades, inquisitions, as well as other persecutions, the extermination of the original inhabitants of America and the introduction of African slaves in their place, were the fruits of Christianity, and among the ancients one cannot find anything analogous to this, anything to counterpoise it; for the slaves of the ancients, the familia, the vernae, were a satisfied race and faithfully devoted to their masters, and as widely distinct from the miserable negroes of the sugar plantations, which are a disgrace to humanity, as they were in colour. The censurable ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... With her, love was liking, duty something unpleasant—generally to other people, and kindness patronage. But she was just in money matters, and her son too had every intention of being worthy of his hire, though wherein lay the value of the labour with which he thought to counterpoise that hire, it were hard ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... Horizontal Movements.—A lever, (Fig. 1), movable about a horizontal axis, carries a corrugated funnel, i, at one of its extremities. At the other extremity it is provided with a counterpoise which permits of its being exactly balanced, while not ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various

... will not go into all that again," said Sir Harry, interrupting him. "I explained to you before, sir, that I would have admitted your future rank as a counterpoise to her fortune, if I could have trusted your character. I cannot trust it. I do not know why you should thrust upon me the necessity of saying all this again. As I believe that you are in pecuniary distress, I made you an offer which I ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope

... to music by the ancients, than what Aristotle relates in its supposed power of softening the rigour of punishment. The Tyrhenians, says he, never scourge their slaves, but by the sound of flutes, looking upon it as an instance of humanity to give some counterpoise to pain, and thinking by such a diversion to lessen the sum total of the punishment. To this account may be added a passage from Jul. Pallus, by which we learn, that in the triremes, or vessels with three banks of oars, there was always a tibicen, or flute-player, ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... addition, the Mayor had been mightily impressed by the personnel of that committee—chiefly old men, to be sure, but men of immense dignity and considerable weight in local finance; and also, for a counterpoise, there was Miss Starkweather. He hadn't liked the way Miss Starkweather looked at him. She had looked at him with the same rigid intensity with which his wife looked at a fly ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall

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

... French power in the New World, established British rule on our shores, and hastened the birth of the great Commonwealth founded by George Washington, by removing from the British Provinces, south of us, the counterpoise of French dominion. More than once French Canada had threatened the New England Settlements; more than once it had acted like a barrier to the expansion and consolidation ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... 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 was, and on a prodigious ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... have escaped your observation that the incorporation of Genoa procured us, in the South of our Empire, a naval station and arsenal, as a counterpoise to Antwerp, our new naval station in the North, where twelve ships of the line have been built, or are building, since 1803, and where timber and other materials are collected for eight more. At Genoa, two ships of the line and four ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith

... excusable, but laudable, in a man magnifying his office; and it was well that my friend the professor should have a slightly exaggerated idea of the bearing of the calculus on the daily routine or occasional emergencies of a ship. What is needed is a counterpoise, to correct undue deflection of the like kind, to which an educational institution from its very character and object is always liable. That the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath, is a saying of wide application. The administrator tends to think ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... governorship of Languedoc, to be removed without a struggle. It was hardly prudent to drive so influential a family to extremities. Moreover, Catharine was too wise to desire the utter destruction of a clan whose authority might on occasion be employed, as it had often been in the past, as a counterpoise to the ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... the compassion which inhabited Mr Allworthy's mind, that nothing but the steel of justice could ever subdue it. To be unfortunate in any respect was sufficient, if there was no demerit to counterpoise it, to turn the scale of that good man's pity, and to engage his friendship ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... deprecated the success of his pursuit, and prayed that the Unpardonable Sin might never be revealed to him. Then ensued that vast intellectual development, which, in its progress, disturbed the counterpoise between his mind and heart. The Idea that possessed his life had operated as a means of education; it had gone on cultivating his powers to the highest point of which they were susceptible; it had raised ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne



Words linked to "Counterpoise" :   weight, equalizer, tare, balance, oppose, counterweight, counterpose



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