Buttress
A buttress is an architectural structure built against (a counterfort) or projecting from a wall which serves to support or reinforce the wall.
Buttresses are fairly common on more ancient buildings, especially in Germany, as a means of providing support to act against the lateral (sideways) forces arising out of the roof structures that lack adequate bracing.
The word buttress, in a more general sense, means to support; one might buttress another person's arguments, for instance. By visual analogy, that which looks like a buttress may be called so; a projecting tree root at the base of the trunk, for example, may be referred to as a buttress.
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