Buttress meaning

bŭt'rĭs
The definition of a buttress is a support for a building usually made of brick or stone.

A stone wall built against a wall to support the building is an example of a buttress.

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Something resembling a buttress, as:
  • The flared base of certain tree trunks.
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A projecting structure, generally of brick or stone, built against a wall to support or reinforce it.
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To buttress is to provide support for a building, or to provide support and justification for an argument or idea.

When a wall is providing support for a building, this is an example of a situation where the wall is a buttress for the building.

When a fact supports a position or argument, this is an example of a fact that is a buttress for the argument.

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A structure, usually brick or stone, built against a wall for support or reinforcement.
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Something that serves to support, prop, or reinforce.
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To support or reinforce with a buttress.
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To sustain, prop, or bolster.
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Anything like a buttress; support or prop.
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To support or reinforce with a buttress.
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To prop up; bolster.
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(architecture) A brick or stone structure built against another structure to support it.
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Anything that serves to support something; a prop.
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(botany) A buttress-root.
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(climbing) A feature jutting prominently out from a mountain or rock; a crag, a bluff.

Crowell Buttresses, Dismal Buttress, Hourglass Buttress, Kardam Buttress, Seven Buttresses.

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(figuratively) Anything that supports or strengthens.
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To support something physically with, or as if with, a prop or buttress.
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To support something or someone by supplying evidence; to corroborate or substantiate.
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Origin of buttress

  • Middle English buteras from Old French bouterez from bouter to strike against of Germanic origin bhau- in Indo-European roots
    From American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition
  • From Old French bouterés, nominative singular of bouteret, from Frankish *botan, from Proto-Germanic *bautaną (“to push”). Ultimately cognate with beat.
    From Wiktionary

Buttress Sentence Examples

  • The Kasteel-Berg (Castle Mount), a northern buttress of the mountain, has its own peculiar flora.

  • Its walls are lofty and supported by buttress bastions with loopholed turrets at intervals; the fortifications, however, are but of hard clay and are much out of repair.

  • 3 This project was favoured by the Magyar conservative magnates who had never broken with the court, but was steadily opposed by the Liberal leader Ferencz Deal(whose upright and tenacious character made him at this crisis the oracle and the buttress of the national cause.

  • Such is the scene which Solomon is said to have invited his Indian bride to gaze upon for the last time, as they rested on the crags of the southern buttress of the Takhtwhere his shrine exists to this day.

  • The Drakensberg forming the buttress of the plateau seaward, attain their highest elevation on the BasutoNatal border.

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Words near buttress in the Dictionary