tightrope

US/ˈtaɪtˌɹoʊp/

nounB2Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,823 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: tightropes

A tightrope is a tautly stretched rope performers balance on. Walk the tightrope, a tightrope act, a tightrope walker.

It is different from a slack rope or a slackline, which sway on purpose; a tightrope is held rigid. The pole a walker carries works by slowing rotation rather than by weight — it makes the body harder to twist, which buys time to correct.

Definitions of tightrope

1nountightropeA tautly stretched rope performers balance on.B2
“The circus performer walked across the tightrope high above the crowd.”

tightrope is a rope.

Where it comes from

Tight plus rope, from the nineteenth-century circus.

From tight + rope.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Circus & Fairground

Practise this word

tightrope in the wild

Charles Blondin was a French tightrope walker and acrobat who achieved international fame in the mid-19th century.
Charles Blondin
Known for crossing the Niagara Gorge on a tightrope, he toured the United States and beyond.
Charles Blondin
Jultagi or eoreum is traditional Korean performance of tightrope-walking.
Jultagi
On the same day in 2010, he upped his personal best by tightrope walking over 2,000 feet in a single performance.
Nik Wallenda
Later that year, he and his mother tightrope walked between the two towers of Condado Plaza Hotel in Puerto Rico.
Nik Wallenda

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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.

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