apuntalar

to shore up

verb ah-poon-tah-LAHR Rare

Also means

to prop up

Usage Note

Apuntalar literally means to brace or prop up a structure with puntales (props, struts). Figuratively it is widely used in politics and economics to mean 'to shore up' or 'to underpin' (apuntalar la economía, 'to shore up the economy'). The figurative sense is now more frequent than the literal one in written Spanish.

Examples

"El gobierno intentó apuntalar el sistema bancario."

Natural Translation

The government tried to shore up the banking system.

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