- a rope or wire that is stretched tightly high above the ground and that performers walk along, especially in a circus
- a tightrope walker
Oxford Collocations DictionaryTightrope is used before these nouns:- walk
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Idioms
See tightrope in the Oxford Advanced American Dictionarytread/walk a tightrope
- to be in a difficult situation in which you do not have much freedom of action and need to be extremely careful about what you do
- The government is walking a difficult tightrope in wanting to reduce interest rates without pushing up inflation.
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tightrope