buttress

Meanings

1. A brick, concrete or stone structure built against another structure to support it.
2. Anything that serves to support something; a prop.
3. A buttress root.
4. A feature jutting prominently out from a mountain or rock.
5. Anything that supports or strengthens.

1. To support something physically with, or as if with, a prop or buttress.
2. To support something or someone by supplying evidence.

Etymology

From Old French ars bouterez (noun, literally “supporting arcs”), from bouterez (adjective), oblique plural of bouteret (rare in the singular), from Frankish *bôtan, from Proto-Germanic *bautaną (“to push”). Ultimately cognate with beat.