buttress
“
She sprang towards me I beg your pardon,' she said The end of the buttress was a foot or two below the level of the leads, where Clara stood.
View all »Definitions (20)
American Heritage Dictionary (7)
- noun A structure, usually brick or stone, built against a wall for support or reinforcement.
- noun Something resembling a buttress, as:
- noun The flared base of certain tree trunks.
Century Dictionary (8)
GNU Webster's 1913 (2)
WordNet (3)
Elsewhere on the web
View all » Examples
- I availed myself of a sort of comb of the mountain, which stood against the wall like a buttress, and which the wind and the solar radiation, joined to the steepness of the smooth rock, had kept almost entirely free from snow. — The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson
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But the use of the buttress is an anomalous feature which it is difficult to believe was of aboriginal conception.
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona Sixteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1894-95, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1897, pages 73-198 -
She sprang towards me I beg your pardon,' she said The end of the buttress was a foot or two below the level of the leads, where Clara stood.
— Wilfrid Cumbermede -
The end of the buttress was a foot or two below the level of the leads, where Clara stood.
— Wilfrid Cumbermede -
To the right of the buttress is a long two-cusped lancet light; to the left may be traced, perhaps, the outline of an original round-arched window; while on both sides there are sloping lines in the masonry, as if there had been an acutely-pointed gable here.
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric
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View all »Etymologies (4)
American Heritage Dictionary (1)
- Middle English buteras, from Old French bouterez, from bouter, to strike against, of Germanic origin; see bhau- in Indo-European roots.
Century Dictionary (2)
GNU Webster's 1913 (1)
WordNet
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Pronunciations
/ (bŭtˈrĭs)/
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American Heritage Dictionary