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Pillar vs Buttress - What's the difference?

pillar | buttress | Related terms |

In architecture terms the difference between pillar and buttress

is that pillar is a large post, often used as supporting architecture while buttress is a brick or stone structure built against another structure to support it.

pillar

English

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Noun

(en noun)
  • (architecture) A large post, often used as supporting architecture.
  • Something resembling such a structure.
  • a pillar of smoke
  • An essential part of something that provides support.
  • He's a pillar of the community.
  • (Roman Catholic) A portable ornamental column, formerly carried before a cardinal, as emblematic of his support to the church.
  • (Skelton)
  • The centre of the volta, ring, or manege ground, around which a horse turns.
  • Synonyms

    * column, sile

    Derived terms

    * A-pillar, B-pillar, C-pillar, D-pillar * earth pillar * from pillar to post * pillar box * pillar of the community * sun pillar

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To provide with pillars or added strength as if from pillars.
  • *
  • *
  • *
  • *
  • See also

    * caterpillar

    Anagrams

    * ----

    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.