Meaning of balancing act in English

balancing act

/ˈbæl.ən.sɪŋ ˌækt/ us

/ˈbæl.ən.sɪŋ ˌækt/

a difficult situation in which someone has to try to give equal amounts of importance, time, attention, etc. to two or more different things at the same time:

I found myself having to do a balancing act between work and family.

Quickly responding to an emergency situation without wasting taxpayers' money can be a difficult balancing act.

a performance in which someone entertains people by balancing in difficult positions, especially high above the ground, or by balancing objects in difficult positions; a person who performs this type of entertainment:

They sing and accompany themselves on guitar while performing a balancing act.

The show employs contortionists, balancing acts, and aerialists.

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equilibrist

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Warning children about personal safety is a balancing act: how do you protect your children without frightening them?
His lawyer faces a difficult balancing act: if his client expresses remorse for his crimes, it would be tantamount to an admission of guilt.
At my age, exercising my body and allowing it to rest is a balancing act.
Leadership requires performing balancing acts every day.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

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You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Spectacles & performances

Entertainers in general

(Definition of balancing act from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of balancing act

balancing act

This "balancing act" is the focus of the analysis to follow.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

This everyday phrase neatly encapsulates the moral balancing act that many grandparents face when confronted with the divorce of their children.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Given the number of potentially important variables in bilingual production, issues of design will always be a balancing act.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

For example, it was vulnerable to attack from either side and had to perform a particular balancing act.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

This hybrid identity is therefore presented as something of a balancing act.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

This is why some analysts believe that "the 'balancing act' is just that: an act" (p. 128).

From the Cambridge English Corpus

To recognize these processes at all requires a difficult balancing act.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Architecture is both a tightrope walk and a balancing act.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

This balancing act could hardly succeed, yet the government was confident that it would be able to control the process.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Living with a person with dementia is a complex balancing act that is difficult to sustain.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

One way to understand this balancing act is to recognize that different people choose to frame the role of experiments differently.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

British socialization policy thus, in late 1947, involved a precarious balancing act.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Success at this task, essentially a balancing act, will require more than the somewhat piecemeal approach to privacy that currently exists.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Of particular poignancy in this balancing act is the case of religious activity.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Overall her story is of women's skill in pursuing a balancing act both in the home and beyond it.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

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These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

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