MEANING
To manage a difficult situation by carefully balancing competing demands or opposing courses of action.
Use it for
balancing two incompatible pressures; describing a precarious compromise; showing a decision with little room for error; maintaining support from opposing groupsSpecifies a precarious balance between conflicting pressures rather than danger in general. Writing functions: Competing demands.
Words that belong together
- walk a tightrope between demands
- walk a political tightrope
On the page
The mediator walked a tightrope between preserving confidentiality and reassuring the public.
Small publishers walk a tightrope when rising costs threaten both affordable prices and editorial quality.
Word forms
- Base
- walk a tightrope
Usage notes
Verbal idiom: walk/walks/walked/walking a tightrope. Tread a tightrope is an established alternative; often between two demands. Register: neutral. Commonness: common (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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