How to Use flying buttress in a Sentence

flying buttress

noun
  • The vault is still punctured by gaping holes, and the flying buttresses are propped up by giant wooden blocks.
    — Aurelien Breeden, New York Times, 23 Dec. 2019
  • But a newspaper is not flying buttresses and arches and limestone.
    — Mary Schmich, chicagotribune.com, 5 June 2018
  • The two-story orb nestles in a cocoon of pipes and cables, the red coils of its main magnet arching up out of the chaos like flying buttresses.
    — Adrian Cho, Science | AAAS, 6 Feb. 2020
  • Common traits include pointed arches, ribbed vaults, and flying buttresses, all of which enabled the structures to be built taller and stronger.
    — Stefanie Waldek, Architectural Digest, 9 Jan. 2026
  • In this era, ogival windows and flying buttresses would be more bracing than yet another thicket of computerized-looking shapes.
    — D. T. Max, New Yorker, 15 Sep. 2025
  • Over the next five years restoration will extend to the three great rose windows of the west, north, and south façades, the flying buttresses of the nave, the west façade towers, and the windows of the nave tribune as well as the choir chapels.
    — Michael T. Davis, The New York Review of Books, 23 May 2026
  • Even its Batman top, whose glass walls would frame a swath of sky-high open space, would nod to the memorable voids formed by the tower’s flying buttresses, which insert patches of sky into the body of the skyscraper.
    — Blair Kamin, chicagotribune.com, 18 Apr. 2018
  • Designed to offer vertical and lateral reinforcement, flying buttresses enable the force exerted by the roof and walls to be offloaded from the upper wall section to the ground.
    — Kristin Shaw, ArsTechnica, 20 May 2026
  • The sign, which went up in the 1960s, is as much a part of Tribune Tower’s identity as its Gothic grotesques and flying buttresses.
    — Blair Kamin, chicagotribune.com, 18 Apr. 2018
  • The monument’s iconic flying buttresses are another late addition, and weren't even planned until the 1300s.
    — Chloe Foussianes, Town & Country, 16 Apr. 2019
  • Studying the mortar used to bind the stones together could reveal how different compositions were used for the various structural elements—vaulting, walls and flying buttresses.
    — Philip Ball, Scientific American, 9 Jan. 2020
  • By 1182, much of the cathedral’s choir — the liturgical core of the building, then reserved for the clergy — with its iconic flying buttresses supporting its tall walls and roof, had been completed.
    — Washington Post, 16 Jan. 2020
  • Moreover, Wren’s weight-bearing walls demanded Gothic-style flying buttresses, which would have looked incongruous amid his Classicism.
    — Barrymore Laurence Scherer, WSJ, 11 May 2018
  • And so Notre Dame’s clerestory windows were enlarged, the roofs changed and the flying buttresses reconstructed, although the cathedral remained relatively dark despite its fashionable update.
    — Washington Post, 16 Jan. 2020
  • To prevent such a disaster, in early July a giant crane began hoisting 7-ton wooden frames cut to the exact specifications of the flying buttresses, to be wedged inside each arc, in order to weigh them down and stop the building from shifting.
    — Vivienne Walt / Paris, Time, 25 July 2019
  • Back in town, inside Palma’s majestic Gothic landmark La Seu, spellbinding rainbows of color flooded down on the nave, and flying buttresses exquisitely embellished the walkable roof terrace.
    — Norma Meyer, Oc Register, 27 May 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'flying buttress.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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