buttress

From Old French ars bouterez (noun, literally “supporting arcs”), from bouterez (adj), oblique plural of bouteret (rare in the singular), from Frankish *botan, from Proto-Germanic *bautaną (“to push”). Ultimately cognate with beat.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈbʌtɹəs/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈbʌtɹɪs/

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, Dismal Buttress, Hourglass Buttress, Kardam Buttress, Seven Buttresses

   

   Milestone Buttress on Tryfan. The direct route is highlighted.

   • 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, page 84:

     Two short pitches up a chimney-crack are followed by a traverse right to the centre of the buttress.

5. (figuratively) Anything that supports or strengthens.
   • South

     the ground pillar and buttress of the good old cause of nonconformity

• counterfort
• brace

• flying buttress

• nunatak
• pilaster

buttress (third-person singular simple present buttresses, present participle buttressing, simple past and past participle buttressed)

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.

• betrusts