underprop

An acquaintance of Lowell’s bemoaned the habit Lowell had of “jumping at some general idea or theorem,” after which he “selects and bends facts to underprop that generalization.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 22, 2025

Here am I left to underprop his land, Who, weak with age, cannot support myself.

From King Richard II by William Shakespeare

And so the food is taken to underprop The tottering joints, and by its interfusion To re-create their powers, and there stop up The longing, open-mouthed through limbs and veins, For eating.

From On the Nature of Things by William Ellery Leonard

Cavendish goes on to observe that Sir Walter was in wonderful declination, yet laboured to underprop himself by my Lord Treasurer and his friends.

From Sir Walter Ralegh A Biography by W. (William) Stebbing

For those He loves that underprop With daily virtues Heaven’s top, And bear the falling sky with ease, Unfrowning caryatides.

From The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) by Robert Louis Stevenson

Second, we were underpropped by more than an inch.

From Time Magazine Archive

Trees newly planted must be supported, underpropped, strengthened and defended against all tempests, mischiefs, injuries, and calamities.

From Gargantua and Pantagruel, Illustrated, Book 3 by Peter Anthony Motteux

Nor indeed can any party be so much strengthened and underpropped, as it will be weakened and undermined by such courses. 

From Sermons on Evil-Speaking by Isaac Barrow

For surely the conscience of this evill ground whereupon they have either built, or underpropped their tyranny, causes men, as well metus as spes in longum projicere, which sets them a work on further mischiefe.

From Machiavelli, Volume I by Edward Dacres

The bear having seized the handle, was shaking it as well as Zbyszko, and notwithstanding the pain caused by every movement of the points imbedded in his breast, be would not let it be "underpropped."

From The Knights of the Cross or, Krzyzacy by Samuel A. Binion