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third-person singular simple present shores up, present participle shoring up, simple past and past participle shored up
(transitive, often figuratively) To reinforce or strengthen (something at risk of failure). quotations examples
This answer fell just at the right time and just in the right place, to save the poor unstable young man from changing his political complexion once more. He had been on the point of beginning to totter again, but this prop shored him up and kept him from floundering back into democracy and re-renouncing aristocracy.
1892, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter XXII, in The American Claimant, New York, N.Y.: Charles L[uther] Webster & Co., pages 233–234
[Harry] Redknapp was determined to secure victory and sent on Younes Kaboul and star playmaker Luka Modric to shore things up.
2011 October 20, Jamie Lillywhite, “Tottenham 1 – 0 Rubin Kazan”, in BBC Sport, archived from the original on 30 August 2021
However, in 1998, the Argentinean-American physicist Juan Maldacena published a paper that shored up the idea that we live in a ‘holographic universe’ and set the world of physics alight.
2018, Marcus Chown, Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand […] , Michael O'Mara Books
[Liz Truss] had cleared her diary and called off a planned visit amid desperate attempts to shore up her premiership, before speaking to Braverman at a meeting in the House of Commons, sources said.
2022 October 19, “Suella Braverman forced to resign as UK home secretary”, in The Guardian