shoring up
4
6.5
- noun
- Specialized
:
refuerzo
- We've worked with thousands of companies, shoring up risk, planning for growth, and managing to protect their most critical assets.
Examples
-
Economically warranted trade among East European states should be shored up, and new trade opportunities based on market relations fostered.
Academic text (1994) -
The approach to healing lies not in building a better defense system but in shoring up the home front with a healthier domestic policy.
Academic text (1998) -
Shoring up the European economy remains a work in progress, at best, and it's uncertain.
Blog text (24) -
Averting the fiscal cliff and shoring up America's long-term economic and military power.
Blog text (8) -
Once these frailties have been shored up, these countries will be more likely to reap the benefits from the globalization whirlwind.
Academic text (1999) -
The great gray-brown walls, shored up by logs thick as a man's body, were broken here and there by fine examples of the glazier's art.
Fiction book (1992) -
In fact, because of their strategic importance in the Cold War and the necessity of shoring up their political regimes, the United States pushed for major structural reforms in Korea and Taiwan that would set the stage for later growth and development.
Academic text (1993) -
Instead of militarizing the Persian Gulf and shoring up shaky alliances on Iran's periphery, Washington should move toward a new regional security system.
Academic text (2008) -
Because a CTB has always been the leading demand from the treaty's non-nuclear parties upon the nuclear-weapons states, achievement of a ban may be essential to shoring up support for the continuation of the NPT.
Academic text (1993) -
The construction team is focused on shoring up the old bridge to ensure it can withstand heavy traffic.
Synonyms
3
7.4
Beams or props placed to support a building and stop it collapsing
3
4.0
Putting supports under something to hold it in place
1
5.6
Work to strengthen the foundation of a building
A method of leaving blocks of rock to support a mine tunnel
Antonyms
How Supported
3
5.1
99
3.9
- Specialized
4
6.5
- Specialized
1
7.3
85
4.0
54
3.6
Surface Forms
Morphology
The noun 'shoring up' directly follows from the verb 'shore' (to brace or prop) plus the particle 'up' indicating support/raising or completion; the combined meaning 'supporting or propping up' is compositionally predictable. This verb+particle pattern is a regular English construction and has clear correlates in many languages, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents would readily infer the meaning.
Etymology
The noun shoring up comes from building work where workers put strong posts called shores under a wall or floor to prop it up and stop it from falling. That's why 'shoring up' now means 'giving support' to something weak or in danger of collapsing.