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Counterpoise   Listen
Counterpoise

noun
1.
A weight that balances another weight.  Synonyms: balance, counterbalance, counterweight, equaliser, equalizer.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Counterpoise" Quotes from Famous Books



... The bellows of sealskin, furnished at its extremity with a nozzle of clay, which had been previously fabricated in the pottery kiln, was established near the heap of ore. Using the mechanism which consisted of a frame, cords of fiber and counterpoise, he threw into the mass an abundance of air, which by raising the temperature also concurred with the chemical transformation to produce ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... a broken heart, suggested an old ditty she had loved formerly, when her heart was full of sunshine and happiness, when her fancy used to indulge in the luxury of melancholic musings, as every happy, sensitive, and imaginative girl will do as a counterpoise to her high-wrought feelings. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... very bosom of the protestant communion. Political considerations favored the design; since a treaty lately concluded between the emperor and the king of France rendered it highly expedient that Henry, by way of counterpoise, should strengthen his alliance with the Smalcaldic league. In short, Cromwel prevailed. Holbein, whom the king had appointed his painter on the recommendation of sir Thomas More, and still retained in that capacity, was sent over to take the portrait of Anne sister of the duke of Cleves; ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... one arm is added to the weight of the already inclined torso, the other arm must rise to form a counterpoise. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... lend his aid to destroy by anticipation and violently any of those great commercial landmarks which remain—and long may they remain—in this country, standing monuments of the past, and affording in the present working of different political passions and interests a counterpoise, the loss of which would soon be felt, and would lead every one to regret the legislation which had converted this bill into an Act. ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby

... and laying hold of the beam above him, drew himself up, and then letting go his hold suddenly, fairly lifted the drunken overseer, chair and all, several feet from the ground, so as to bring him on a level with himself, and then, in mid air, began to pummel his counterpoise with right goodwill. At length, fearful of the consequences from the fury into which the man had worked himself, Fyall and I dashed out the candles, and fled to our rooms, where, after barricading the doors, we shouted to the servants to let ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... employed, from 2-1/4 to 2-5/8 inches in diameter. These swing from a single joint at the axis of the spindle, which is the most sensitive arrangement, and make from 300 to 350 revolutions per minute, at which speed their centrifugal force lifts the counterpoise. The lower arms are jointed to the upper ones at the centres of the balls, and connect with the slide by joints about two inches apart. The counterpoise may be attached to the slide in any manner; for the sake of elegance, it is put in the form of a vase rising between the ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne

... 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 a ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy

... counterpoise, there were admirable surprises in man. That cross-play of human tendencies determined from time to time in the forces of unique and irresistible character, "moving all together," pushing the world ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater

... associates, obtaining corporate privileges, are enabled to prosecute, under one superintending head, their business to better advantage. Nothing can be more essentially democratic or better devised to counterpoise the influence of individual wealth. In Kentucky, almost every manufactory known to me is in the hands of enterprising and self-made men, who have acquired whatever wealth they possess by patient and diligent labor. Comparisons are odious, and but in ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various

... not believe, we know," was, as I said, the proud boast a spiritualist once made to me. And if the facts—any of the facts—of Spiritualism stand as facts, there is no doubt that it would form the strongest possible counterpoise to the materialism of our age. It presses the method of materialism into its service, and meets the doubter on his own ground of demonstration—a low ground, perhaps, but a tremendously decisive one, the ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... conflict, had not soon The Eternal, to prevent such horrid fray, Hung forth in Heaven his golden scales, yet seen Betwixt Astrea and the Scorpion sign, Wherein all things created first he weighed, The pendulous round earth with balanced air In counterpoise, now ponders all events, Battles and realms: In these he put two weights, The sequel each of parting and of fight: The latter quick up flew, and kicked the beam, Which Gabriel spying, thus bespake the Fiend. Satan, I know ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... same principle of experience which gives us a certain degree of assurance in the testimony of witnesses gives us also, in this case, another degree of assurance against the fact which they endeavour to establish, from which consideration there necessarily arises a counterpoise, and mutual destruction of belief ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... the seventh, that darkest of Christian centuries, was now bearing its fruit in the work of Bede, who was really the sign of a far more permanent intellectual movement than his own, and in that of Boniface, Wilbrord, and Willibald, who began to win for Christendom in Germany more than a counterpoise for her losses in the South and East, from Armenia ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley

... restrictive laws paralyze as much as is in their power, by their tendency towards the isolation of 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 ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat

... the opinion that any such air must be specifically heavier than ordinary air, both on account of its containing phlogiston and also of its greater condensation. But how perplexed was I when I saw that a very thin flask which was filled with this air, and most accurately weighed, not only did not counterpoise an equal quantity of ordinary air, but was even somewhat lighter. I then thought that the latter view might be admissible; but in that case it would necessarily follow also that the lost air could be ...
— Discovery of Oxygen, Part 2 • Carl Wilhelm Scheele

... was too much upset to answer his own question. Beauty is the greatest of human gifts for power. Every power that has no counterpoise, no autocratic control, leads to abuses and folly. Despotism is the madness of power; in women ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... strange. It bids man recognise that he is vile, even abominable, and bids him desire to be like God. Without such a counterpoise, this dignity would make him horribly vain, or this humiliation would ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal

... thousand eggs a year. A swallow devours about five hundred insects a day, eggs and all. A sparrow's nest in the city of Paris was found to contain seven hundred pairs of the upper wings of cockchafers. It is easy to see what an excess of insect life is produced when a counterpoise like this is withdrawn; and the statistics collected show clearly to what an extent the balance of nature has been disturbed. Thus the value of wheat destroyed in a single season, in one department of the east ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... a so-called brace-fastening, two little bronze pulleys which supported an iron upright fixed into a level platform, on which stood two angels fastened by their girdles. These angels were kept upright by a counterpoise of lead which they had under their feet, and by another that was under the platform on which they stood; and this also served to make them balanced one with another. The whole was covered with a quantity of ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari

... ingrow into the hereafter, where the clouds have been tramped by the angry feet of the destroying angel. A Patmos for a new Apocalypse. Unamuno is constantly attacking sturdily those who clamor for the modernization, Europeanization of Spanish life and Spanish thought: he is the counterpoise to the northward-yearning apostles ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos

... discussion, and it was a controversy to which his mind had often returned; and though he carefully disguised his vacillation from others, and, perhaps from himself, he had never been able to come to any precise line of decision on the subject. In fact, his natural sense had acted as a counterpoise to his controversial zeal. He was by no means pleased with the quiet and indifferent manner in which King William's government slurred over the errors of the times, when, far from restoring the Presbyterian kirk to its former supremacy, they passed an act of oblivion even to those ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... periods of time is probably due to this balance between the effects of tidal action and those arising from the loss of heat—in other words, we have here one of those delicate arrangements in the way of counterpoise which serve to maintain the balanced conditions of the earth's surface amid the great conflicts of diverse energies which are at work in ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... (and Cicero appears to have thought so too,) when they reasoned against everything, and laid it down as a system, that against every affirmative position an equal force of negative argument could be brought as a counterpoise: now this view of Socrates is, in my judgment, not only partial, but incorrect. He entertained no such doubts of the powers of the mind to attain certainty. About physics he thought man could know nothing; ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... angle of rotation and thereby increasing the apparent sensitiveness of the scale, and, second, that of overcoming the effect of change of level. The secondary beam may be dispensed with if a multiplier is not needed, and the secondary truss, t, with its standard and counterpoise, H, used alone to counteract the effect of change of level. Fig. 5 shows a modification of this extremely ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various

... king was resolute in his determination to free himself from the chains by which his ministers had enthralled him. Early in July, he once more applied to his uncle, who undertook to treat with the Duke of Newcastle, whose parliamentary weight was nearly a counterpoise to Pitt's oratory and popularity. Newcastle joined Cumberland in addressing himself to the more moderate section of the opposition, and at length a new ministry was formed. The Marquis of Rockingham became head of the treasury; General Conway became one of the secretaries of state, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... compensation, equation; commutation; indemnification; compromise; &c 774 neutralization, nullification; counteraction &c 179; reaction; measure for measure, retaliation, &c 718 equalization; &c 27; robbing Peter to pay Paul. set-off, offset; make-weight, casting-weight; counterpoise, ballast; indemnity, equivalent, quid pro quo; bribe, hush money; amends &c (atonement) 952; counterbalance, counterclaim; cross-debt, cross- demand. V. make compensation; compensate, compense^; indemnify; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... it. They teach us the best remedies for all anxiety, the great thoughts that tranquillise us in our ignorance, viz. that all is in God's merciful hand, and that whatever may come, we have a divine power which will fit us for it; and they bid us anticipate our work and do it, as the best counterpoise for all vain curiosity about what may be coming on ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... who is mechanically drilled, leads also to a continuous criticism of habits, and their discontinuance when they are no longer adequate. Reflection, if it is itself a habit, is the most valuable one of all. It is an important counterpoise to the hardening and fossilization which repeated habitual actions bring about ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... special training, so to speak, as well as a nice equivalence in weight between passenger and driver difficult to always realize, its use is not likely to supersede that of wheeled vehicles. To take a ride en cacolet, one might have a long hunt before finding a driver who should be his proper counterpoise; and it would be often inconvenient, not to say impracticable, thus to have to order one's driver according ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... no dictation as regards its manner of life. Here we shall see the conservative traditions of the country strongly mustered for defence, incapable of being eliminated as a political force, and forming a counterpoise to the radical democracy of ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau

... opening the smoke, while the steamer was passing through the bridge, came out in dense volumes. As soon, however, as the arch was cleared, the pipe was brought back into its place again by the force of great weights placed at the ends of the levers as a counterpoise. Thus the opening below was closed, and the smoke came out of the top of the ...
— Rollo in London • Jacob Abbott

... from most of the other sphincters of the body, that it is furnished with antagonist muscles, which are the radial fibres of the iris: no sooner does the circular muscle begin to relax, than these fibres, wanting their counterpoise, are forcibly drawn back, and open the pupil to a considerable wideness. But though we were not apprised of this, I believe any one will find, if he opens his eyes and makes an effort to see in ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... the hands of the Roman Catholic population. It is easy to say that there ought to be no difference between Roman Catholics and Protestants. I wish to God it could be so; but the circumstances of Ireland are such as to render it necessary, that a counterpoise should be given to counteract the influence which the Roman Catholics will acquire by the bill. I wish to carry the principles of 1829 into effect, and that can not be done if both parties are placed upon an equal footing. I think it most unfair to give the Catholic ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington

... force in fact must be an emotional and instinctive one, not a rational and deliberate one; and this must be our next endeavour, to see in what direction the counterpoise must lie. ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson

... swift glance to the wider circle of the brethren, which encompasses each of us, and gives the all-embracing direction, which carries in itself everything. 'Fervent love' to our fellow-Christians is the counterpoise to earnest government of ourselves. There is a selfishness possible even in cultivating our religion, as many a monk and recluse has shown. Such love as Peter here enjoins will save us from the possible ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... command of the Baltic. In that war the Great Elector had laid the foundations of a strong political power, which, under his successors, gradually grew into an influential force in Germany. The headship of Protestant Germany devolved more and more on this state, and a counterpoise to Catholic Austria grew up. This latter State had developed out of Germany into an independent great Power, resting its supremacy not only on a German population, but also on Hungarians and Slavs. In the Seven Years' War Prussia broke away from Catholic Austria ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi

... robbery of every kind, especially of the property of the Church. He bestowed freedom on slaves after six years of service. Some think he instituted trial by jury. Like Theodosius and Charlemagne, he gave peculiar privileges to the clergy as a counterpoise to ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord

... 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 ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... conception of the moral law deprives self-love of its influence, and self-conceit of its illusion, it lessens the obstacle to pure practical reason and produces the conception of the superiority of its objective law to the impulses of the sensibility; and thus, by removing the counterpoise, it gives relatively greater weight to the law in the judgement of reason (in the case of a will affected by the aforesaid impulses). Thus the respect for the law is not a motive to morality, but is morality ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant

... continue to hold the balance between parties: so at least those who knew James understood him. He had no intention of allowing Buckingham's fall, as the enemies of that nobleman wished, but he perhaps thought of finding a counterpoise for him: he did not wish to let him become lord and master of affairs. On the other hand Buckingham, by his connexion with the leading men of the Lower House, had already won an independent position, ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... habits, bad food, and the want of fresh air develop, needs the counterpoise of a fresh excitement—so a German, the opera, or a tragedy, occupies her evening hours. Three or four days in the week, at least, she is up till midnight, and rises just in time to get to school at nine. She never stands in the cool evening air to see the red sun sink below the hills; ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... But caution was necessary; he waited and watched. He seized all opportunities of profiting by the calamities or the embarrassments of his potent neighbors. He put down all open revolt. He sapped the authority of all the great families in Asia Minor, whose hereditary influence could be a counterpoise to his own. Mecca and Medina, the holy cities of his religion, he brought again within the pale of his dominions. He augmented and fostered, as a counterbalancing force to the Janissaries, the corps of the Topjees or artillery-men. He amassed preparatory treasures. And, up to the year 1820, "his ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... the unchallenged supremacy of a later day, the American leaders early sought the alliance of the Bourbon kingdoms, France and Spain, the hereditary enemies of Great Britain. There alone could be found the counterpoise to a power which, if unchecked, ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan

... minute he was over the ridge, looking down on Mike, who, instead of hauling in the rope as he came up, had let himself glide down like a counterpoise, and as soon as he saw his companion in safety, he drew himself in a crouching position and stared up ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn

... peace between all the contending powers in the Thirty Years' War, which dragged on their slow length from 1643 to 1648, the stadholder became more and more convinced that it was in the interest of the Dutch to maintain Spain as a counterpoise to the growing power of France, and to secure the favourable terms, which, in her extremity, Spain would be ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson

... doing so, for, in order to counterpoise the forward weight of the big helmet, the weight on the diver's back is five pounds heavier than that in front. The instant his legs were in the water, however, the terrible weight of ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney

... two systems of counter-slopes partially developed, in the direction from west to east, between the Guaviare and the Caqueta, and between the Mamori and the Pilcomayo. It is also worthy of remark that in the southern hemisphere the Cordillera of the Andes sends an immense counterpoise eastward in the promontory of the Sierra Nevada de Cochabamba, whence begins the ridge stretching between the tributary streams of the Madeira and the Paraguay to the lofty group of the mountains of Brazil or Minas Geraes. Three ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt

... violence of this conflict, had not soon Th' Eternal to prevent such horrid fray Hung forth in Heav'n his golden Scales, yet seen Betwixt Astrea and the Scorpion signe, Wherein all things created first he weighd, The pendulous round Earth with ballanc't Aire 1000 In counterpoise, now ponders all events, Battels and Realms: in these he put two weights The sequel each of parting and of fight; The latter quick up flew, and kickt the beam; Which Gabriel spying, thus bespake the Fiend. Satan, I know thy strength, and thou knowst ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... attention to minute details, and carrying the story through a longer range of years, will paint the progress of the Republic in its palmy days, and narrate the establishment of, its external system of dependencies and its interior combinations for self-government and European counterpoise. The lessons of history and the fate of free states can never be sufficiently pondered by those upon whom so large and heavy a responsibility for the maintenance of rational human ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... the Irish vote as an anti-British force, then, is undoubtedly overrated in England; but it must be borne in mind that some of the other foreign elements in the population which on many questions may act as a counterpoise to the Irish are not themselves conspicuously friendly to England. If we hear too much of the Irish in America, we hear perhaps too little of some of the other peoples. And the point which I would impress on the English reader is that he cannot expect the American to feel towards England ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... aliens-wordiness, vanity, obscurity, shallowness, an empty glitter, the sin of posturing. A quick-witted woman exerting her wit is both a foreigner and potentially a criminal. She is incandescent to a breath of rumour. It accounted for her having detractors; a heavy counterpoise to her enthusiastic friends. It might account for her husband's discontent-the reduction of him to a state of mere masculine antagonism. What is the husband of a vanward woman? He feels himself but a diminished man. The English husband of a voluble woman relapses ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith



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



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