"balancing act" meaning in English

See balancing act in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: en-au-balancing act.ogg [Australia] Forms: balancing acts [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun}} balancing act (plural balancing acts)
  1. (entertainment) A performance that involves balancing things precariously and suspensefully. Categories (topical): Circus
    Sense id: en-balancing_act-en-noun-uWkX6mrC Disambiguation of Circus: 91 9 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 91 9 Topics: entertainment, lifestyle
  2. (figurative, idiomatic) An effort to manage many conflicting or competing items or interests. Tags: figuratively, idiomatic
    Sense id: en-balancing_act-en-noun-Y-6owdxM

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for balancing act meaning in English (2.6kB)

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    {
      "form": "balancing acts",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
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  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "balancing act (plural balancing acts)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "91 9",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
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            "Entry maintenance"
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          "source": "w+disamb"
        },
        {
          "_dis": "91 9",
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Circus",
          "orig": "en:Circus",
          "parents": [
            "Entertainment",
            "Theater",
            "Culture",
            "Art",
            "Society",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A performance that involves balancing things precariously and suspensefully."
      ],
      "id": "en-balancing_act-en-noun-uWkX6mrC",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(entertainment) A performance that involves balancing things precariously and suspensefully."
      ],
      "topics": [
        "entertainment",
        "lifestyle"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2015, Jennifer Miskec, Annette Wannamaker, The Early Reader in Children’s Literature and Culture",
          "text": "While I have not found corroboration for King's claim, Ivy and Bean series author Annie Barrows has acknowledged that there is a delicate balancing act involved in representing free-range children today",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2020 October 14, Phil McNulty, “England 0-1 Denmark: 'Harry Maguire looked devoid of confidence in Nations League loss'”, in BBC Sport",
          "text": "It is a difficult balancing act because Maguire might not wish to be taken out of the line of fire and such are United's current struggles that Solskjaer may feel he needs his leader going in to battle for him.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2023 May 31, Tammy Samuel, Fergus McLaverty, “The political picture: what lies ahead for Britain's railways?”, in RAIL, number 984, page 31",
          "text": "Labour is also facing a delicate balancing act in managing the expectations of trade unions, following its pledge to nationalise the railways.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "An effort to manage many conflicting or competing items or interests."
      ],
      "id": "en-balancing_act-en-noun-Y-6owdxM",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(figurative, idiomatic) An effort to manage many conflicting or competing items or interests."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "figuratively",
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
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      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/En-au-balancing_act.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
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  "word": "balancing act"
}
{
  "categories": [
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    "English entries with incorrect language header",
    "English lemmas",
    "English multiword terms",
    "English nouns",
    "English terms with audio links",
    "en:Circus"
  ],
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "balancing acts",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
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      "expansion": "balancing act (plural balancing acts)",
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  "senses": [
    {
      "glosses": [
        "A performance that involves balancing things precariously and suspensefully."
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(entertainment) A performance that involves balancing things precariously and suspensefully."
      ],
      "topics": [
        "entertainment",
        "lifestyle"
      ]
    },
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        "English idioms",
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
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        {
          "ref": "2015, Jennifer Miskec, Annette Wannamaker, The Early Reader in Children’s Literature and Culture",
          "text": "While I have not found corroboration for King's claim, Ivy and Bean series author Annie Barrows has acknowledged that there is a delicate balancing act involved in representing free-range children today",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2020 October 14, Phil McNulty, “England 0-1 Denmark: 'Harry Maguire looked devoid of confidence in Nations League loss'”, in BBC Sport",
          "text": "It is a difficult balancing act because Maguire might not wish to be taken out of the line of fire and such are United's current struggles that Solskjaer may feel he needs his leader going in to battle for him.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2023 May 31, Tammy Samuel, Fergus McLaverty, “The political picture: what lies ahead for Britain's railways?”, in RAIL, number 984, page 31",
          "text": "Labour is also facing a delicate balancing act in managing the expectations of trade unions, following its pledge to nationalise the railways.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "An effort to manage many conflicting or competing items or interests."
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(figurative, idiomatic) An effort to manage many conflicting or competing items or interests."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "figuratively",
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
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      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/En-au-balancing_act.ogg",
      "tags": [
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      "text": "Audio (AU)"
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-05 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.