The AI-powered English dictionary
plural buttresses
(architecture) A brick or stone structure built against another structure to support it. examples
(by extension) Anything that serves to support something; a prop. examples
(botany) A buttress-root. examples
(climbing) A feature jutting prominently out from a mountain or rock. quotations examples
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.
2005, Will Cook, Until Darkness Disappears, page 54
Two short pitches up a chimney-crack are followed by a traverse right to the centre of the buttress.
2010, Tony Howard, Treks and Climbs in Wadi Rum, Jordan, page 84
(figurative) Anything that supports or strengthens. quotations examples
the grand pillar and buttress of the good old cause of nonconformity
1692 October 30, Robert South, A Further Account of the Nature and Measures of Conscience
third-person singular simple present buttresses, present participle buttressing, simple past and past participle buttressed
To support something physically with, or as if with, a prop or buttress. examples
(figurative, by extension) To support something or someone by supplying evidence. quotations examples
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.
2021 April 14, Diana B. Henriques, “Bernard Madoff, Architect of Largest Ponzi Scheme in History, Is Dead at 82”, in The New York Times