Buttress definition

bŭtrĭs
buttressed buttresses buttressing
See word origin
Frequency:
Something resembling a buttress, as:
  • The flared base of certain tree trunks.
  • A horny growth on the heel of a horse's hoof.
noun
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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.

noun
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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.

verb
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A structure, usually brick or stone, built against a wall for support or reinforcement.
noun
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Something that serves to support, prop, or reinforce.
noun
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To support or reinforce with a buttress.
verb
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To sustain, prop, or bolster.
verb
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Anything like a buttress; support or prop.
noun
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To support or reinforce with a buttress.
verb
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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.
noun
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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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Other Word Forms

Noun

Singular:
buttress
Plural:
buttresses

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.

  • The history of reformed dogmatics on this subject does not buttress your point unfortunately.

  • We emerge at the foot of a huge rocky buttress to delightful grassy pastures.

  • Set in the eastern buttress of the tower is a huge holy water stoup, quite out of scale with the door.

  • 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.

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Words near buttress in the Dictionary