counterpoise

American  

[koun-ter-poiz] / ˈkaʊn tərˌpɔɪz /

noun

1. a counterbalancing weight.

2. any equal and opposing power or force.

3. the state of being in equilibrium; balance.

4. Radio. a network of wires or other conductors connected to the base of an antenna, used as a substitute for the ground connection.

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verb (used with object)

counterpoised, counterpoising

1. to balance by an opposing weight; counteract by an opposing force.

2. to bring into equilibrium.

3. Archaic. to weigh (one thing) against something else; consider carefully.

counterpoise British  

/ ˈkaʊntəˌpɔɪz /

noun

1. a force, influence, etc, that counterbalances another

2. a state of balance; equilibrium

3. a weight that balances another

4. a radial array of metallic wires, rods, or tubes arranged horizontally around the base of a vertical aerial to increase its transmitting efficiency

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verb

1. to oppose with something of equal effect, weight, or force; offset

2. to bring into equilibrium

3. archaic to consider (one thing) carefully in relation to another

Etymology

Origin of counterpoise

1375–1425; counter- + poise ¹; replacing late Middle English countrepeis < Anglo-French, equivalent to Old French contrepois

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

counterpoise counterpoised counterpoising

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

For this levity is largely a counterpoise to our anxieties—a violent reaction against events, an attempt to keep the balance of things even.

From Leaves in the Wind by A. G. (Alfred George) Gardiner

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

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

In the stirring events which immediately followed the Spanish evacuation, Datto Mandi remained neutral, his old antagonism to Alvarez being counterpoised by the conviction that a Zamboanga republic must end in a fiasco.

From The Philippine Islands by John Foreman

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

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

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

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