Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A person who performs feats of balance, such as tightrope walking.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun One who balances equally; one who practises balancing in unnatural positions and hazardous movements, as a rope-dancer or funambulist.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun One who balances himself in unnatural positions and hazardous movements; a balancer.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun archaic a
tightrope walker
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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The steward brought me my coffee, and, wedged by boxes and pillows, like an equilibrist, I sat up and drank it.
CHAPTER XXX 2010
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When the equilibrist Madame Phom returned to Fan Nan Nan, she did not find Dickie Goldwire at home.
Villa Incognito Robbins, Tom 2003
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Nor do I see my way clear in providing for the steeple-climber, the equilibrist, the railroad president, or the tea-taster.
Reveries of a Schoolmaster Francis B. Pearson
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Naturally a good equilibrist, the girl took easily to the motor-cycle, and even when Joe went at top speed on some smooth road she liked it.
Joe Strong, the Boy Fish or Marvelous Doings in a Big Tank Vance Barnum
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For the unusual cold and the night work together had betrayed him into potations even beyond his wont, the slippery pavements had proven very baffling to his dignified tread -- and the snowy signet upon the back of his topcoat spoke to a delighted office all too plainly that at last the alcoholic equilibrist par excellence had fallen.
White Ashes Alden Charles Noble
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Another, an equilibrist, showed her how, when he was obliged to stay in bed with a broken leg and had nobody to wait on him, he used to wait on himself by going round the room on his hands ... like that.
The Bill-Toppers J. Andr�� Castaigne
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Above, on one side, is an equilibrist swinging on a slack rope; and on the other, a man flying from the tower to the ground, by means of a groove fastened to his breast, slipping over a line strained from one place to the other.
The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency John Trusler
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The steward brought me my coffee, and, wedged by boxes and pillows, like an equilibrist, I sat up and drank it.
Chapter 30 1914
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At that time I was a contortionist and they called me the Snake-Man; then I became an equilibrist and adopted the name of
The Quest P��o Baroja 1914
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Bob with listless enthusiasm, teetering the while upon his cane like a Japanese equilibrist.
The Auction Block Rex Ellingwood Beach 1913
qms commented on the word equilibrist
The voice, your dull pol will insist,
Is his and not his ventriloquist.
He'll grasp at renown
As contortionist clown,
Or fame as an agile equilibrist.
March 25, 2017