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Undergird vs Buttress - What's the difference?

undergird | buttress |

As verbs the difference between undergird and buttress

is that undergird is to strengthen, secure, or reinforce by passing a rope, cable, or chain around the underside of an object while buttress is to support something physically with, or as if with, a prop or buttress.

As a noun buttress is

(architecture) a brick or stone structure built against another structure to support it.

undergird

English

Verb

(en verb)
  • To strengthen, secure, or reinforce by passing a rope, cable, or chain around the underside of an object.
  • To give fundamental support; provide with a sound or secure basis; provide supportive evidence for.
  • To lend moral support to.
  • To secure below or underneath.
  • Synonyms

    *(l) *(l) *(l)

    Antonyms

    * undermine

    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.