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Buttress   /bˈətrəs/   Listen
noun
Buttress  n.  
1.
(Arch.) A projecting mass of masonry, used for resisting the thrust of an arch, or for ornament and symmetry. Note: When an external projection is used merely to stiffen a wall, it is a pier.
2.
Anything which supports or strengthens. "The ground pillar and buttress of the good old cause of nonconformity."
Flying buttress. See Flying buttress.


verb
Buttress  v. t.  (past & past part. buttressed; pres. part. buttressing)  To support with a buttress; to prop; to brace firmly. "To set it upright again, and to prop and buttress it up for duration."





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Buttress" Quotes from Famous Books



... Beside the buttress of one bridge lay two still figures of Algerian Zouaves. These were fresh dead, fallen in the taking of the town. Only two men! There were dead by thousands which one might see in other places. These two had leaped ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... out a walie hammer; About the knottit buttress clam'er; Alang the steep roof stoyt an' stammer, A gate mis-chancy; On the aul' spire, the bells' hie cha'mer, Dance your ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... breath again!" he shouted. "We are over the worse now and shall soon be in calmer water. Get your feet well out in front of you, if you can, and dig your heels into the mud, then you will act as a buttress to me and help me to ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... of the scale, and stood Upon the second buttress of that mount Which healeth him who climbs. A cornice there, Like to the former, girdles round the hill; Save that its arch with sweep less ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... strength to take the thrust of a vaulted stone roof must have required consummate capacity and skill. At Eton, where, however, the stone roof was never built, the buttresses planned to carry it appear so enormous that the building seems to be all buttress, but here such an impression could never for a moment be gained, for the chapel filling each bay completely masks the widest portion of the adjoining buttresses. The upper portions are so admirably proportioned ...
— Beautiful Britain--Cambridge • Gordon Home


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