Sample Sentences for
buttress
grouped by contextual meaning
(editor-reviewed)

buttress as in:  buttress the defenses

•
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
Show 3 more with this contextual meaning
  • •
    The old adobe hall was buttressed along its outer walls with...  (source)
    buttressed = made stronger or supported
  • •
    Windblown drifts buttressed the house—something moved on the second floor—a hand holding back the edge of a drape.†  (source)
  • •
    Some architect had reached far back into history for these buttressed walls and dark hangings, she thought.†  (source)
▲ show less (of above)
Show 10 more with 5 word variations
  • •
    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)
  • •
    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)
  • •
    "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)
  • •
    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.
  • •
    On either flank, a shadowy row of sleek buttresses jutted out like the ribs of a beautiful beast.†  (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)
  • •
    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 else-it had been part of Hyperion's past.†  (source)
  • •
    Westward, they widened into the sun, soaring up from buttressing shoulders.†  (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)
▲ show less (of above)

buttress as in:  a flying buttress

•
The buttress wall supports the main wall while preserving an open feel in the house.
buttress = an architectural feature that supports the wall of a building
Show 3 more with this contextual meaning
  • •
    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
  • •
    I stepped up onto the ridge so he could flatten himself against the buttress.  (source)
    buttress = an architectural feature that supports the wall of a building
  • •
    he could see the arched buttresses of the cathedral dome  (source)
    buttresses = architectural features supporting the walls
▲ show less (of above)
Show 3 more with 2 word variations
  • •
    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 temple-haunting martlet, does approve By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze, buttress, Nor coigne of vantage, but this bird hath made His pendant bed and procreant cradle,  (source)
    buttress = supporting structure
  • •
    The stars are the great Gothic churches: spires, naves, delicate flying buttresses, massive conventional buttresses, stained glass and grandeur, grandeur, grandeur.†  (source)
▲ show less (of above)