Bill Dahl
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The word sustain is both handy and hardy. Its use has been sustained since the days of Middle English (its ultimate source is Latin sus-, meaning "up," plus tenēre, meaning "to hold") by its utility across a variety of consequential subjects, from environmental protections to legal proceedings to medical reports. The word is so prevalent and so varied in its application, in fact, that it enjoys sustained high ranking as one of our top lookups—evidence of our readers’ sustained commitment to, well, sustaining themselves with information about words.
Synonyms
Examples of sustain in a Sentence
Quartz Bot, Quartz, 14 Nov. 2024
By this point, the network of support that had sustained IRA operations in West Belfast was beginning to show signs of tear.
—Rafaela Bassili, Vulture, 14 Nov. 2024
Katie Campione, Deadline, 23 Oct. 2024
Its power, instead, comes from the dissonance between the terrifying condition of waiting for answers and the flights of imagination that this purgatory, paradoxically, sustains.
—Walt Hunter, The Atlantic, 3 Sep. 2024
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Dictionary Entries Near sustain
Cite this Entry
“Sustain.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sustain. Accessed 28 Nov. 2024.
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sustain
transitive verb
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