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Buttress vs Abutment - What's the difference?

buttress | abutment |

In architecture terms the difference between buttress and abutment

is that buttress is a brick or stone structure built against another structure to support it while abutment is that element that shares a common boundary or surface with its neighbor.

As a verb buttress

is to support something physically with, or as if with, a prop or buttress.

buttress

Noun

(es)
  • (architecture) A brick or stone structure built against another structure to support it.
  • Anything that serves to support something; a prop.
  • (botany) A buttress-root.
  • (climbing) A feature jutting prominently out from a mountain or rock; a crag, a bluff.
  • * 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 caƱons and ominous buttresses .
  • * 2010 , Tony Howard, Treks and Climbs in Wadi Rum, Jordan , ISBN-13: 9781852842543, page 84:
  • Two short pitches up a chimney-crack are followed by a traverse right to the centre of the buttress .
  • (figurative) Anything that supports or strengthens.
  • * South
  • the ground pillar and buttress of the good old cause of nonconformity

    Derived terms

    * flying buttress

    Synonyms

    * counterfort

    See also

    * nunatak

    Verb

    (es)
  • To support something physically with, or as if with, a prop or buttress.
  • To support something or someone by supplying evidence; to corroborate or substantiate.
  • abutment

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • The point of junction between two things, in particular a support, that abuts.
  • (engineering, architecture) The solid portion of a structure that supports the lateral pressure of an arch or vault.
  • (engineering) A construction that supports the ends of a bridge; a structure that anchors the cables on a suspension bridge.
  • Something that abuts, or on which something abuts.
  • The state of abutting.
  • (architecture) That element that shares a common boundary or surface with its neighbor.
  • (dentistry) The tooth that supports a denture or bridge.
  • A fixed point or surface where resistance is obtained.
  • The fulcrum acted as an abutment .

    References