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

Bascule bridge, a counterpoise or balanced drawbridge, which is opened by sinking the counterpoise and thus lifting the footway into the air.

From Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (2nd 100 Pages) by Noah Webster

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 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

It’s composed in a rare register: mourning and fury counterpoised by humor and a refusal of despair.

From New York Times ● Feb. 20, 2018

While these remain exactly counterpoised, the mass necessarily continues entire; but the least excess of the centrifugal over the attractive force would be attended with the effect of separating the mass and its outer parts. 

From Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation by Robert Chambers

The attraction exerted on a flat armature across air gaps 2 millimeters thick was measured by counterpoising.

From Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 by Various

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

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

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

The counterpoising or balancing medium consisted of money to be given to the Church.

From The Mysteries of All Nations Rise and Progress of Superstition, Laws Against and Trials of Witches, Ancient and Modern Delusions Together With Strange Customs, Fables, and Tales by James Grant