the.com/pillar
holds up the whole damn temple and never once asks for credit.
means A tall vertical support that bears the weight of a structure above it — or, by extension, a person or principle that something else fundamentally depends on.
from From Latin 'pila,' a stone pier or pillar, which softened through Medieval Latin 'pilare' into Old French 'piler' before settling into English. The same 'pila' is thought to lie behind 'pilaster' and possibly 'pile' in the sense of a heap of stones — fitting, for a word that has always been about stacking weight and making it stand.
- caryatids
- Greeks carved columns as draped women bearing rooftops
- saint perch
- Stylites lived atop pillars for decades, preaching skyward
- hollow strength
- Many great columns are hollow yet bear immense loads
- entasis trick
- Greek columns bulge slightly to look perfectly straight
nelson's column — monument in trafalgar square, london, 52 meters tall, erected 1843
trajan's column — roman monument in rome, 125 feet tall, built 113 ad with 2,662 figures carved in spiral
pillars of hercules — rock of gibraltar and jebel musa, strait of gibraltar, ancient boundary of known world