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buttress
in a sentence
grouped by contextual meaning

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  • The old adobe hall was buttressed along its outer walls with...   (source)
    buttressed = made stronger or supported
  • I think I was glad to know it; I think I was glad to have my better impulses thus buttressed and guarded by the terrors of the scaffold.   (source)
    buttressed = strengthened
  • Windblown drifts buttressed the house—something moved on the second floor—a hand holding back the edge of a drape.†   (source)
  • After a while, without saying anything, I went to the side of the road and lay down on a pile of damp leaves between the tall, buttressed roots of a kapok tree.†   (source)
  • Filling three full city blocks, rising more than a hundred and fifty meters to its central, sharpened spire, the Shrike Church's central temple was part awe-inspiring cathedral, part Gothic joke with its fluid, buttressed curves of stone permabonded to its whiskered-alloy skeleton, part Escher print with its tricks of perspective and impossible angles, part Boschian nightmare with its tunnel entrances, hidden chambers, dark gardens, and forbidden sections, and-more than anything…†   (source)
  • Some architect had reached far back into history for these buttressed walls and dark hangings, she thought.†   (source)
  • Each night he told himself not to return, but on the next he would take a walk at dusk, his walk would become a pilgrimage, he would feel guilt and shame, he would top the groundswell that buttressed her strawberries and pause before the sweep of her fields.†   (source)
  • "Geek flowers" was the completed research that pih-ers presented to Farmer or Kim, and "scholbutt" was short for "scholarly buttressing," which meant that every statement of fact Farmer made in a paper had to be verified as coming from some authoritative source.†   (source)
  • Generations of Balti had buttressed it against washing away by wedging flat rocks together into a flimsy shelf.†   (source)
  • Riding there, I buttressed myself against seeing Snow Flower and the butcher, their son, who I realized must have married in by now, and, of course, the sworn sisters.†   (source)
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  • I cradled him, his skull buttressed against mine and now wet with my tears.†   (source)
  • And three great fig trees, whose buttressed roots had withstood centuries of cyclones, raced out of the future and came as a big surprise.†   (source)
  • He hesitated, then he buttressed his courage with the thought that one did not doubt the good faith and the competence of railroad executives.†   (source)
  • At first Alessandro feared that with the weakening of whatever held back its invisibly buttressed mass, it would collapse and cover the plain of the Tiber.†   (source)
  • There is nothing like a newborn baby to renew your spirit - and to buttress your resolve to make the world a better place.   (source)
  • He sat up straight, buttressed by the columns of paragraphs on yellow-tinged paper, which he was seeing in his mind: "At a time of crucial public need, are we to waste social effort on the manufacture of obsolete products?†   (source)
  • And everyone in Korphe knew the legend of this listing wooden building buttressed with earthern walls.†   (source)
  • Their emotional certainty seemed buttressed by access to a fund of knowledge denied to ordinary men, but a day's observation of their activities was sufficient to reveal all their thought processes.†   (source)
  • Thus assured and buttressed, the centre of the Anglo-Dutch army was well posted.†   (source)
  • The one he rode into was a clear, sharp shaft in yellow stone a thousand feet deep, with wonderful wind-worn caves low down and high above buttressed and turreted ramparts.†   (source)
  • Finally many small and dangerous and difficult points having been bridged or buttressed or fended against as well as each side could, it became Belknap's duty to say his last word for Clyde.†   (source)
  • Those narrow straits of Sunda divide Sumatra from Java; and standing midway in that vast rampart of islands, buttressed by that bold green promontory, known to seamen as Java Head; they not a little correspond to the central gateway opening into some vast walled empire: and considering the inexhaustible wealth of spices, and silks, and jewels, and gold, and ivory, with which the thousand islands of that oriental sea are enriched, it seems a significant provision of nature, that such…†   (source)
  • This barricade, constructed as it was and admirably buttressed, was really one of those situations where a handful of men hold a legion in check.†   (source)
  • The colossal mastodon (nipple-toothed) twists and untwists his trunk, and brays and pounds with his huge tusks the fragments of rock that cover the shore; whilst the megatherium (huge beast), buttressed upon his enormous hinder paws, grubs in the soil, awaking the sonorous echoes of the granite rocks with his tremendous roarings.†   (source)
  • It is true that the old house stood slightly off the perpendicular, and bulged out a little towards the street; its roof sloped a little to one side, like the cap over the left ear of a Tugendbund student; its lines wanted accuracy; but after all, it stood firm, thanks to an old elm which buttressed it in front, and which often in spring sent its young sprays through the window panes.†   (source)
  • Westward, they widened into the sun, soaring up from buttressing shoulders.†   (source)
  • But the warmth, the glow, evidently does not regard or need buttressing either; neither is it quenched by the actuality of an orange and eggs and toast.†   (source)
  • I dropped as it were, frantically clutching the double cord with one hand and buttressing myself from the wall with the other by means of my stick.†   (source)
  • What human power could restore me to the light of the sun by rending asunder the huge arches of rock which united over my head, buttressing each other with impregnable strength?†   (source)
  • The naturalists and their followers, thinking they can solve this question, are like plasterers set to plaster one side of the walls of a church who, availing themselves of the absence of the chief superintendent of the work, should in an access of zeal plaster over the windows, icons, woodwork, and still unbuttressed walls, and should be delighted that from their point of view as plasterers, everything is now so smooth and regular.†   (source)
    standard prefix: The prefix "un-" in unbuttressed means not and reverses the meaning of buttressed. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
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  • I stepped up onto the ridge so he could flatten himself against the buttress.   (source)
  • His tracks led toward the east buttress of Denali, straight through a labyrinth of giant crevasses, evidence that he had made no apparent effort to circumvent obvious hazards.   (source)
    buttress = supporting structure
  • he could see the arched buttresses of the cathedral dome   (source)
    buttresses = architectural features supporting the walls
  • I ran down the ridge to the flat walkway near the buttress.   (source)
    buttress = an architectural feature that supports the wall of a building
  • The stars are the great Gothic churches: spires, naves, delicate flying buttresses, massive conventional buttresses, stained glass and grandeur, grandeur, grandeur.   (source)
  • no jutty, frieze, buttress,   (source)
    buttress = supporting structure
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show 10 more examples with any meaning
  • On either flank, a shadowy row of sleek buttresses jutted out like the ribs of a beautiful beast.†   (source)
  • Harold Crosby, or any other Announcing Angel, could never be concealed in these buttresses.†   (source)
  • My red shoes are off, my legs tucked up underneath me on the chair, surrounded by a buttress of red skirt, true, but tucked nonetheless, as at a campfire, of earlier and more picnic days.†   (source)
  • She turned the pages of the sketchbook and looked at the inky drawings of crossbeams and braces or turrets and buttresses, and she saw the measurements and notes, none of which meant anything to her.†   (source)
  • Sheer rock buttresses seamed with ice pressed in from both edges of the glacier, rising like the shoulders of a malevolent god.†   (source)
  • It was a shadow darker than the shadows, more regular than the serrated patchwork of buttresses and crevices and columns that mottled the face of the cliff. it was a perfect square of darkness, at least thirty meters to a side.†   (source)
  • As opposed to what his corpulence might suggest, Lotario Thugut had the rosebud genitals of a cherub, but this must have been a fortunate defect, because the most tarnished birds argued over who would have the chance to go to bed with him, and then they shrieked as if their throats were being cut, shaking the buttresses of the palace and making its ghosts tremble in fear.†   (source)
  • A hundred yards away stood a concrete buttress dam.†   (source)
  • The jagged buttress magnified the boom produced by each stroke of her wings until it was as loud as a thunderclap.†   (source)
  • Afghanistan's new government was employing Turkish construction crews to clear the tunnel of all the concrete rubble deposited by the explosions and to buttress the sagging structure against further collapse.†   (source)
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  • The intent was to buttress the Border Patrol's efforts to capture immigrants and prevent migrants from crossing.†   (source)
  • She would buttress her argument with recommendations from Dr. Cuevas, which later, when he was asked point-blank, turned out to have been made up.†   (source)
  • The cheekbones were intact, more prominent than ever, as if to better buttress those oval, slanting eyes which were her prettiest feature.†   (source)
  • Mau peered around the buttress of a giant fig tree.†   (source)
  • Halls and galleries drifted past: graceful buttresses, delicate arches, fluted columns, terraces and bowers.†   (source)
  • It would have a great influence on them, it would buttress their confidence, it would help their morale.†   (source)
  • Out from their feet were flung huge buttresses and broken hills that were now at the nearest scarce a dozen miles away.†   (source)
  • Two large towers rise like medieval buttresses.†   (source)
  • Her husband had a heavy gold chain hanging around his bull-like neck, which was hard to call a neck, as it was like the buttress of a bridge.†   (source)
  • They behaved like people who do not want to be seen: lurking in shadow behind buttresses or in doorways,†   (source)
  • He was about to buttress Yousef's claims against his father, but realized he couldn't do that.†   (source)
  • "We can't have him sleep in the woods, not when it rains," she said, and as if to buttress her point there was a clap of thunder and rain started pelting the roof and walls.†   (source)
  • Did the Overlords, he wondered, sport themselves upon its slopes and sweep like eagles around those immense buttresses?†   (source)
  • He could quote things at great length (there was no way for them to know whether he was really quoting or inventing) and he had an uncanny ability to turn any trifling remark into an abstruse speculation wherein things that were plain as day to common sense became ominous, uncertain, and formidable, like buttresses of ruined cities discovered in deep shadow at the bottom of a blue inland sea.†   (source)
  • The twelve-year-old stared on, over the buttress of the baby she held to her chest.†   (source)
  • The wooden buttresses are quite elaborate—they are wainscoted, and even the lines of the wainscoting are visible on the buttresses, despite their height; that's how brightly lit the church is.†   (source)
  • With Tenzing nervously paying out rope from below, Hillary wedged himself into a cleft between the rock buttress and a fin of vertical snow at its edge, then began to inch his way up what would thereafter be known as the Hillary Step.†   (source)
  • In the morning, on the way up, I'd made a point of continually Studying the route on this part of the mountain, frequently looking down to pick out landmarks that would be helpful on the descent, compulsively memorizing the terrain: "Remember to turn left at the buttress that looks like a ship's prow.†   (source)
  • The dark-stained, wooden buttresses against the high, vaulted, white-plaster ceiling accentuate how well lit the church is; despite the edifice's predominance of stone and stained glass, there are no corners lost to darkness or to gloom.†   (source)
  • But it wasn't until he began to search the high, vaulted ceiling of Hurd's Church—perhaps seeking angels in the shadowy buttresses—that I realized I was in the presence of Fat Harold Crosby, the former Announcing Angel who'd flubbed his lines and needed prompting, and who'd been abandoned in the heavens of Christ Church in the Nativity of '53.†   (source)
  • It acted as buttress and dam for a cornice of blue ice that groaned and split under the wind, loosing jagged slabs that shattered on the granite below.†   (source)
  • As she passed along the sides of the building, she swung at the fluted buttresses that supported the walls, demolishing them one at a time.†   (source)
  • Maybe it was the architectural perfection of the mountains—the broad set-backs and buttresses of maroon and ochre granite that built, with symphonic intensity, toward the lone soaring finale of their peaks—but despite his weakened state, his lack of food and warm clothing, his poor odds of surviving if he didn't find some of both sometime soon, Mortenson felt strangely content.†   (source)
  • Chick Morrison attempted a whistle-stop tour to buttress the country's morale by speeches on self-sacrifice for the general welfare.†   (source)
  • They lay now peering over the edge of a rocky hollow beneath the out-stretched shadow of the northmost buttress of Ephel Duath.†   (source)
  • An enormity of pillars, steps, buttresses, bridges, domes, and towers flowing into one another as if they had all been chiseled from one collossal rock, the Temple of the Lord of Light loomed like Aegon's High Hill.†   (source)
  • Their trunks had huge buttresses that looked as though they might reach down to the roots of the world.†   (source)
  • The hollow in which they had taken refuge was delved in the side of a low hill, at some little height above a long trenchlike valley that lay between it and the outer buttresses of the mountains.†   (source)
  • There's a destroyer loose in the country, who's cutting down the buttresses one after another to let the structure collapse upon our heads.†   (source)
  • Away to the right at the head of the great dale the mighty Starkhorn loomed up above its vast buttresses swathed in cloud; but its jagged peak, clothed in everlasting snow, gleamed far above the world, blue-shadowed upon the East, red-stained by the sunset in the West.†   (source)
  • It's surrounded by gigantic walls--a hundred feet thick at the base, and on top a road so wide you can drive four chariots down it side by side--and the whole city's white as snow, with magnificent buttresses and arches, and there are buildings six stories high and at every story a hanging garden so that what you see when you first come over the mountains or the endless plain is an incredible explosion of light and color--the white of the walls and houses, the green of the gardens…†   (source)
  • Past the pink buttress of his jaw rose the little fountain, not playing now, where his mouth stood open to the sky.†   (source)
  • Then green branches closed it over, and with her next step trumpet and muscadine vines and the great big-leaved vines made pillars about the trunks of the trees and arches and buttresses all among them.†   (source)
  • There was a soldier standing with his girl in the shadow of one of the stone buttresses ahead of us†   (source)
  • It had stout wooden buttresses supporting nothing.†   (source)
  • They went along a line of red doorways and across the bare rock to the gaunt ruin, whose lateral walls, with their buttresses, still braved the storm and let in the starlight.†   (source)
  • But that our cause, our very life and future hopes and past pride, should have been thrown into the balance with men like that to buttress it—men with valor and strength but without pity or honor.†   (source)
  • The brushings of the wind against the angles, buttresses, and door-jambs were as the passing of these only other inhabitants, the tappings of each ivy leaf on its neighbour were as the mutterings of their mournful souls, the shadows as their thin shapes in nervous movement, making him comrades in his solitude.†   (source)
  • I saw little of the mischief wrought by the Martians until I reached Wellington Street, and there I saw the red weed clambering over the buttresses of Waterloo Bridge.†   (source)
  • They were nearing the buttresses that force the Severn eastward and make it an English stream, and the sun, sinking over the Sentinels of Wales, was straight in their eyes.†   (source)
  • With a pulse beginning to beat and hammer away his calmness, he eyed that indistinct line of steps, up to where the buttress of wall hid further sight of them.†   (source)
  • The trail changed to a zigzag along a seamed and cracked buttress where ledges leaned outward waiting to fall.†   (source)
  • They slipped through the buttresses, the rafters, the joists; they ran from beam to beam as they might have run from tree to tree in a forest.†   (source)
  • Above sheered the black, gold-patched slopes, steep and unscalable, rising to buttresses of dark, iron-hued rock.†   (source)
  • Chapter XVIII: Lying to Mr. Beebe, Mrs. Honeychurch, Freddy, and The Servants Windy Corner lay, not on the summit of the ridge, but a few hundred feet down the southern slope, at the springing of one of the great buttresses that supported the hill.†   (source)
  • They skirted a shoulder painfully for hours, and, behold, it was but an outlying boss in an outlying buttress of the main pile!†   (source)
  • …range of buildings and courts, low, but very handsomely built and ornamented, and in that way forming a great contrast to the unpretentiousness of the houses round about; while above this lower building rose the steep lead-covered roof and the buttresses and higher part of the wall of a great hall, of a splendid and exuberant style of architecture, of which one can say little more than that it seemed to me to embrace the best qualities of the Gothic of northern Europe with those of the…†   (source)
  • Retribution, swift vengeance, eternal malice were in his whole aspect, and spite of all that mortal man could do, the solid white buttress of his forehead smote the ship's starboard bow, till men and timbers reeled.†   (source)
  • The access to the upper apartments in the tower which consist in all of four stories, is given by stairs which are carried up through the external buttresses.†   (source)
  • There, directly under the bridge, was the merchant's house, a mass of gray stone, unhewn, referable to no style, looking, as the voyager had described it, like a buttress of the wall against which it leaned.†   (source)
  • He was bound also to evolve other Terpsichorean figures in respect of door-steps, scrapers, cellar-hatches, church buttresses, and the overhanging angles of walls which, originally unobtrusive, had become bow-legged and knock-kneed.†   (source)
  • Bathsheba skirted the buttress, and beheld the hole and the tomb, its delicately veined surface splashed and stained just as Troy had seen it and left it two hours earlier.†   (source)
  • "One would think," he then replied, "that the richest merchant in Antioch would have a house for business corresponding to his wealth; but if you would find him in the day, follow the river to yon bridge, under which he quarters in a building that looks like a buttress of the wall.†   (source)
  • Along each side wall was a range of striding buttresses, throwing deep shadows on the spaces between them, which were perforated by lancet openings, combining in their proportions the precise requirements both of beauty and ventilation.†   (source)
  • The wall is of immense thickness, and is propped or defended by six huge external buttresses which project from the circle, and rise up against the sides of the tower as if to strengthen or to support it.†   (source)
  • So he stood above the young thing, making his legs buttresses against the uneasily moving herd; and he begged milk of a virtuous cow, and the calf throve, and the ringed elephant was the calf's guide and defence.†   (source)
  • These massive buttresses are solid when they arise from the foundation, and a good way higher up; but are hollowed out towards the top, and terminate in a sort of turrets communicating with the interior of the keep itself.†   (source)
  • When this introductory ceremony was performed, Cedric arose, and, extending his hand to Richard, conducted him into a small and very rude chapel, which was excavated, as it were, out of one of the external buttresses.†   (source)
  • They were garrulous and gossipy, and their solid, print-clad presences filled the shops with a cozy warmth; a buttress against the cold mist of the morning outdoors.†   (source)
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