balance

UK/ˈbæləns/US/ˈbæləns/

nounB14 meanings Very common — you will meet it every day · #1,852 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: balanced, balancing, balances

Balance is the steady state where nothing tips. You have it standing on one leg with your eyes shut; you lose it on ice, on a bicycle, on the top step of a ladder with a paint tin in one hand.

Balance is a verb as well: you balance a tray on one hand, balance the books at the end of the month, balance a job against three children. In a bank it is the plainest number on the statement — your balance is what is actually left, and the balance of a bill is the part still owed. A balance is also the old two-pan weighing machine, which is why the scales of justice are one. Learn the phrases together, because they carry the word further than the meaning does: on balance means having weighed everything up, strike a balance means find the workable middle, in the balance means nobody knows yet, and off balance means both physically wobbling and caught out by a question.

Definitions of balance

1nounbalanceThe steady state in which something stays upright and does not fall.B1~16%
“She lost her balance on the last step.”
synonyms: steadiness, stability
2nounamountThe amount of money in an account, or the part of a bill still to pay.B2~29%
“The balance in the account was lower than she expected.”
3verbholdTo hold something steady, or to keep yourself from falling.B1~11%
“He balanced the plate of soup on one knee.”
4noungoodA good proportion between two things that pull against each other.B2~44%
“The balance between work and rest is the hard part.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 158 sentences found in the wild and placed 134 of them on a sense (24 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Phrases it lives in

on balance — taking everything into account
strike a balance — find a workable middle point between two things
in the balance — undecided, and able to go either way
off balance — unsteady on your feet, or caught out and unsure what to say

Also practised as

verbTo hold something steady so it does not fall.

Where it comes from

A balance was a pair of plates. Latin lanx meant a plate or a dish, and bilanx meant two-plated: a beam with a dish hanging at each end, and the answer sitting wherever it stopped. Everything the word does now comes off those two dishes — your bank balance, a balanced meal, a child on one leg on a wall.

Middle English
balaunce
English, today
balance

Built from

lanx · Latin — plate, scale

From Middle English balaunce. From Middle English balaunce, from Old French balance, from Latin bilancia, from (accusative form of) Latin bilanx (“two-scaled”), from bi- + lanx (“plate, scale”). Displaced the word — wǣġ akin to Modern English: wey from Proto-West Germanic wāgu (“scales; weight”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Big Ideas, A Man Called Ove, Numbers & Measurement, Bank & Post Office

First appears in chapter 5 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

balance in the wild

Sometimes, trade in services is also included in the balance of trade but the official IMF definition only considers goods.
Balance of trade
A scale or balance is a device used to measure weight or mass.
Weighing scale
In photography and image processing, color balance is the global adjustment of the intensities of the colors (typically red, green, and blue primary colors).
Color balance
Hence, the general method is sometimes called gray balance, neutral balance, or white balance.
Color balance
False balance can be the result of viewpoint discrimination or political bias.
False balance

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the lanx family

balance

balance — used about once every 220 pages · #1,852 · point at the bar for the others

Definitions of balance

1nounbalanceThe steady state in which something stays upright and does not fall.B1~16%

“She lost her balance on the last step.”

synonyms: steadiness, stability

2nounamountThe amount of money in an account, or the part of a bill still to pay.B2~29%

“The balance in the account was lower than she expected.”

3verbholdTo hold something steady, or to keep yourself from falling.B1~11%

“He balanced the plate of soup on one knee.”

4noungoodA good proportion between two things that pull against each other.B2~44%

“The balance between work and rest is the hard part.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 158 sentences found in the wild and placed 134 of them on a sense (24 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.