Definition of "counterpoise" [coun•ter•poise]

• A counterbalancing weight. (noun)
• A force or influence that balances or equally counteracts another. (noun)
• The state of being in equilibrium. (noun)
• To oppose with an equal weight; counterbalance. (verb-transitive)
• To act against with an equal force or power; offset. (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "He wandered about the glen and the hillside, but she took care never to fall in his way, the excitement of eluding him making a kind of counterpoise for the absence of the excitement there used to be in meeting him."
• "Hooking the RV or the chain link fence to the "counterpoise" probably doesn't do much to improve efficiency and should not be looked at as a substitute for a radial system."
• "To amuse himself with the little creations of his own fancy, amid the toil and fatigue of a laborious life; to transcribe the various feelings -- the loves, the griefs, the hopes, the fears -- in his own breast; to find some kind of counterpoise to the struggles of a world, always an alien scene, a task uncouth to the poetical mind -- these were his motives for courting the Muses, and in these he found poetry to be its own reward."