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Poise   /pɔɪz/   Listen
Poise

noun
(Formerly written also peise)
1.
A cgs unit of dynamic viscosity equal to one dyne-second per square centimeter; the viscosity of a fluid in which a force of one dyne per square centimeter maintains a velocity of 1 centimeter per second.
2.
A state of being balanced in a stable equilibrium.
3.
Great coolness and composure under strain.  Synonyms: aplomb, assuredness, cool, sang-froid.
verb
(past & past part. poised; pres. part. poising)
1.
Be motionless, in suspension.
2.
Prepare (oneself) for something unpleasant or difficult.  Synonym: brace.
3.
Cause to be balanced or suspended.
4.
Hold or carry in equilibrium.  Synonym: balance.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Poise" Quotes from Famous Books



... small head was thrown back, and in the poise of her slim young body there was a mingling of challenge and appealing self-defence. She looked like some trapped wild ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... and leaving her slow, wide-winged poise in the upper airs, she veered and with swallow-like swiftness darted down on him. "That sounds patronizing and elder-brotherish," she told him. "I've taken on all sorts of cargo that you don't know anything about. In ever so many ways you seem ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... Kyle, and I'll shoot you." In her tones there was none of the hysteria that usually spices feminine threats. She was angry, but her voice was grimly level. She had the poise of one who had learned to depend on her own resolute spirit. But she displayed something more than that. It was recklessness that was bravado. In the eyes of the State chairman, friend of Thornton, and accustomed to a milder form of femininity, it was impudence. Yet her beauty ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day

... given valuable advice; scarce one who did not know off-hand that there was never a seaport in Bohemia,—as if Shakspeare's world were one which Mercator could have projected; scarce one but was satisfied that his ten finger-tips were a sufficient key to those astronomic wonders of poise and counterpoise, of planetary law and cometary seeming-exception, in his metres; scarce one but thought he could gauge like an ale-firkin that intuition whose edging shallows may have been sounded, but whose abysses, stretching down amid the sunless roots ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... the dividing line between the territories of Switzerland and those of the King of Sardinia passes, was abeam, and the excellent calculations of the sagacious Maso became still more apparent. He had foreseen another shift of wind, as the consequence of all this poise and counterpoise, and he was here met by the true breeze of the night. The last current came out of the gorge of the Valais, sullen, strong, and hoarse, bringing him, however, fairly to windward of his port. The Winkelried was cast in season, and, when the gale struck her ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper


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