the.com/buttress
the unsung muscle that lets stone reach for heaven without faceplanting back to earth
means A structure built against a wall to support or reinforce it, or by extension anything that props up, strengthens, or sustains something else.
from From Old French bouterez, from bouter "to thrust or push against" — itself of Germanic origin, a cousin of the same root that gives us "butt" (as in a goat butting heads). So a buttress is, quite literally, the thing that pushes back: stone shoving against stone to keep a wall from giving way.
- flying type
- Gothic cathedrals push thrust outward via airborne stone arches
- verb too
- to buttress means to prop up any argument
- tree edition
- rainforest giants grow buttress roots like natural support fins
- old word
- derives from Old French bouter, meaning to thrust
- redirects force
- redirects roof weight into the ground, not the walls