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buttress

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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WOTD – 18 November 2009
Buttress (sense 1)
Buttress (sense 3) tree roots of a kapok tree
Milestone Buttress (sense 4) on Tryfan. The direct route is highlighted.

Alternative forms

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Etymology

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From Old French ars bouterez (noun, literally “supporting arcs”), from bouterez (adj), oblique plural of bouteret (rare in the singular), from Frankish *bôtan, from Proto-Germanic *bautaną (“to push”). Ultimately cognate with beat.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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buttress (plural buttresses)

  1. (architecture) A brick, concrete or stone structure built against another structure to support it.
    • 1954 June, “Strengthening of River Calder Retaining Wall, N.E.R.”, in Railway Magazine, page 429:
      It was decided, therefore, to build eight concrete buttresses from the new strengthening work to safeguard the general stability of the wall along the length where the greatest movement had taken place.
    Synonyms: counterfort, brace
    Hyponym: flying buttress
    Coordinate term: pilaster
  2. (by extension) Anything that serves to support something; a prop.
  3. (botany) A buttress-root.
  4. (climbing) A feature jutting prominently out from a mountain or rock.
    Synonyms: crag, bluff
    Crowell Buttresses, Dismal Buttress
    • 2005, Will Cook, Until Darkness Disappears, page 54:
      All that day they rode into broken land. The prairie with its grass and rolling hills was behind them, and they entered a sparse, dry, rocky country, full of draws and short cañons and ominous buttresses.
    • 2010, Tony Howard, Treks and Climbs in Wadi Rum, Jordan, →ISBN, page 84:
      Two short pitches up a chimney-crack are followed by a traverse right to the centre of the buttress.
  5. (figurative) Anything that supports or strengthens.
    • 1692 October 30, Robert South, A Further Account of the Nature and Measures of Conscience:
      the grand pillar and buttress of the good old cause of nonconformity

Derived terms

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Translations

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Verb

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buttress (third-person singular simple present buttresses, present participle buttressing, simple past and past participle buttressed)

  1. To support something physically with, or as if with, a prop or buttress.
  2. (figurative, by extension) To support something or someone by supplying evidence.
    Synonyms: corroborate, substantiate
    • 2021 April 14, Diana B. Henriques, “Bernard Madoff, Architect of Largest Ponzi Scheme in History, Is Dead at 82”, in The New York Times‎[1], →ISSN:
      Buttressed by elaborate account statements and a deep reservoir of trust from his investors and regulators, Mr. Madoff steered his fraud scheme safely through a severe recession in the early 1990s, a global financial crisis in 1998 and the anxious aftermath of the terrorist attacks in September 2001.

Translations

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Further reading

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Anagrams

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