Word.ws English Dictionary

balance of terror

balance of terror noun: the tenuous peace that existed during the nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Noun

balance of terror

  1. (historical) The tenuous peace that existed during the nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Origin of balance of terror

Probably coined by Lester Pearson in June 1955 at the 10th anniversary of the signing of the UN Charter: “The balance of terror has succeeded the balance of power.”

Questions about balance of terror

What does balance of terror mean?
Balance of terror means the tenuous peace that existed during the nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
What part of speech is balance of terror?
Balance of terror is a noun.

Words near balance of terror in the dictionary

  1. balance of equities
  2. balance of payments
  3. balance of power
  4. balance of probabilities
  5. balance of probability
  6. balance of terror
  7. balance of trade
  8. balance out
  9. balance room
  10. balance rooms
  11. balance sheet

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: balance of terror (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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