balancing

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of balance.

   Balancing the company's books took the accountant all week.

   He walked the fence rail, balancing with his arms held wide.

   Note

   The -ing form carries every use of the verb, from the bookkeeper's to the sailor's. It covers weighing one thing against another, holding something steady on a narrow base, and even drawing a sail into a narrower compass. As a gerund it still behaves like a verb and takes a direct object (balancing the books), whereas the noun for the act needs of: the balancing of the books.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   An act in which someone keeps steady, or in which something is held in equilibrium.

   The balancing of competing interests dominated the entire negotiation.

   A moment's loss of balancing sent the gymnast tumbling from the beam.

   Similarreconciliation

   Note

   The noun can be counted where the gerund cannot, and its plural names a run of separate feats. A. E. W. Mason's Running Water (1907) lists balancings upon knife-edge ridges among a climber's exploits. Andre Castaigne's The Bill-Toppers (1909) has a performer locked in her room drilling hers on a bicycle. The plural also has a loftier life in the scriptural phrase "the balancings of the clouds."

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