Search the Dictionary

Converted into money; coined. If exportation will not balance importation, away must your silver go again, whether moneyed or not moneyed. Locke.

To set off; to place over against; to balance; as, to offset one account or charge against another.

To put in opposition, with a view to counterbalance or countervail; to set against; to offer antagonistically. I may . . . oppose my single opinion to his. Locke.

To outweigh; to overbalance. [R.] Sir T. Browne.

To exceed in weight; to overbalance; to weigh down. Drayton. Hooker.

One of the pieces or levers connected with the pendulum of a clock, or the balance of a watch, which receive the immediate impulse of the scape-wheel, or balance wheel. Brande & C.

To walk the plank, to walk along a plank laid across the bulwark of a ship, until one overbalances it and falls into the sea; -- a method of disposing of captives practiced by pirates.

A kind of balance used in raising and letting down a drawbridge. It consists of timbers joined in the form of a St. Andrew's cross. (b) pl.

The weight, or mass of metal, used in weighing, to balance the substance weighed.

The balancer of dipterous insects.

To outweigh; to overpower by weight; to exceed in weight; to overbalance. An inconsiderable weight, by distance from the center of the balance, will preponderate greater magnitudes. Glanvill.

purchased, or obtained for a consideration; hence, venal; corrupt. Money being the counterbalance to all things purchasable by it, as much as you take off from the value of money, so much you add to the price of things exchanged. Locke.

Square; even; balanced; equal; exact. [Archaic] " A quadrate, solid, wise man." Howell.

; ground of argument. I'll give him reasons for it. Shak. The reason of the motion of the balance in a wheel watch is by the motion of the next wheel. Sir M. Hale. This reason did the ancient fathers render, why the church was called "catholic." Bp. Pearson. Virtue and vice are not arbitrary things; but there is a natu…

To come to an accounting; to make up accounts; to settle; to examine and strike the balance of debt and credit; to adjust relations of desert or penalty. "Parfay," sayst thou, "sometime he reckon shall." Chaucer. To reckon for, to answer for; to pay the account for. "If they fail in their bounden duty, they shall recko…

controls the effective length of the hairspring, and thus regulates the vibrations of the balance. (b) The governor of a steam engine. (c) A valve for controlling the admission of steam to the steam chest, in a locomotive.

The striking of a balance at regular intervals in a running account. "An account is said to be taken with annual or semiannual rests." Abbott.

To turn upside down; to invert. A pyramid reversed may stand upon his point if balanced by admirable skill. Sir W. Temple.

A small forked weight which straddles the beam of a balance, along which it can be moved in the manner of the weight on a steelyard.

talian alunite, and highly valued by dyers on account of its freedom from iron. -- Roman balance, a form of balance nearly resembling the modern steelyard. See the Note under Balance, n., 1. -- Roman candle, a kind of firework (generally held in the hand), characterized by the continued emission of shower of sparks,…