1. poise - Noun
2. poise - Verb
Weight; gravity; that which causes a body to descend; heaviness.
The weight, or mass of metal, used in weighing, to balance the substance weighed.
The state of being balanced by equal weight or power; equipoise; balance; equilibrium; rest.
To balance; to make of equal weight; as, to poise the scales of a balance.
To hold or place in equilibrium or equiponderance.
To counterpoise; to counterbalance.
To ascertain, as by the balance; to weigh.
To weigh (down); to oppress.
To hang in equilibrium; to be balanced or suspended; hence, to be in suspense or doubt.
Source: Webster's dictionarySophistication might be described as the ability to cope gracefully with a situation involving the presence of a formidable menace to one's poise and prestige (such as the butler, or the man under the bed - but never the husband). James Thurber
At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to achieve somewhere in the later seventies. P. G. Wodehouse
Average human nature is very coarse, and its ideals must necessarily be average. The world never loved perfect poise. What the world does love is commonly absence of poise, for it has to be amused. Henry Adams
When he looks back, the critic sees a eunuch's shadow. Who would be a critic if he could be a writer? Who would hammer out the subtlest insight into Dostoevsky if he could weld an inch of the Karamazovs, or argue the poise of Lawrence if he could shape the free gust of life in The Rainbow? George Steiner
I have no limits, no filter, no class, no poise. No decorum. Just fun. Kathy Griffin
I paused, watching the swallows; for they seemed to me the symbol, in their swift, sure curvetting, all daring and balance and surprise, of the delicate poise and motion of Art, that visits no two men alike, in a world where no two things of all the things there be, are quite the same. John Galsworthy