• Buttress

    Pronunciation

    • UK IPA: /ˈbÊŒtɹəs/
    • US IPA: /ˈbÊŒtrɪs/

    Origin

    From Old French bouterés, nominative singular of bouteret, from Frankish *botan, from Proto-Germanic *bautaną ("to push"). Ultimately cognate with beat.

    Full definition of buttress

    Noun

    buttress

    (plural buttresses)
    1. (architecture) A brick or stone structure built against another structure to support it.
    2. 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; a crag, a bluff.Crowell Buttresses, , , , Image:Milestone buttress.JPG|thumb|right|Milestone Buttress on
      • 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-13: 9781852842543, 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.
      • Souththe ground pillar and buttress of the good old cause of nonconformity

    Derived terms

    Synonyms

    Verb

    1. To support something physically with, or as if with, a prop or buttress.
    2. To support something or someone by supplying evidence; to corroborate or substantiate.
    © Wiktionary