Word.ws English Dictionary

sustain

Syllables: sus·tainUK/səˈsteɪn/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Australia/səˈstæɪn/

sustain verb: to maintain, or keep in existence. Also the clipping of sustainability.

Verb

sustain (third-person singular simple present sustains, present participle sustaining, simple past and past participle sustained)

  1. (transitive) To maintain, or keep in existence.
    • The professor had trouble sustaining students’ interest until the end of her lectures.
    • The city came under sustained attack by enemy forces.
  2. (transitive) To provide for or nourish.
    • provisions to sustain an army
    • Yea, forty years didst thou sustain them in the wilderness, so that they lacked nothing; their clothes waxed not old, and their feet swelled not.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Nehemiah 9:21
    Synonyms:
    hold
  3. (transitive) To encourage or sanction (something).
  4. (transitive) To experience or suffer (an injury, etc.).
    • The building sustained major damage in the earthquake.
    • […] if you omit
      The offer of this time, I cannot promise
      But that you shall sustain moe new disgraces,
      With these you bear already.1613 (date written), William Shakespeare, [John Fletcher], “The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eight”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio)...
  5. (transitive) To confirm, prove, or corroborate; to uphold.
    • to sustain a charge, an accusation, or a proposition
    • After the vote is taken, the Chairman states that the decision of the Chair is sustained, or reversed, as the case may be.1876, Henry Martyn Robert, Pocket Manual of Rules of Order for Deliberative Assemblies, Chicago: Griggs, published 1885, Section 61 (e), page 167
  6. To allow, accept, or admit (e.g. an objection or motion) as valid.
    Antonyms:
    overrule
  7. To keep from falling; to bear; to uphold; to support.
    • A foundation sustains the superstructure; an animal sustains a load; a rope sustains a weight.
  8. To aid, comfort, or relieve; to vindicate.
    • When I desir’d their leave that I might pity him, they took from me the use of mine own house, charg’d me on pain of perpetual displeasure neither to speak of him, entreat for him, nor any way sustain him.c. 1603–1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of King Lear”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...
    • His Sons, who seek the Tyrant to sustain,
      And long for Arbitrary Lords again,1697, Virgil, “The Sixth Book of the Æneis”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, lines 1122-1123
  9. To be a long-lasting sound.
    • I like how long that drum sustains.

Noun

sustain (plural sustains)

  1. A mechanism which can be used to hold a note, as the right pedal on a piano.
    • To call this music bland is to ignore the down-the-drain vocal fade-aways, the extended sax sustains […]2011, Chuck Eddy, Rock and Roll Always Forgets, page 265

Also used as

sustain is also the clipping of sustainability.

sustain meaning in Bengali, Telugu, Gujarati and Sanskrit

sustain in Bengali

টিকিয়ে রাখা

sustain in Telugu

నిలబెట్టుకోడానికి, నిలబెట్టుకోవడానికి

sustain in Gujarati

ટકાવી રાખવા

sustain in Sanskrit

to maintain something
यच्छति yacchati
to provide for or nourish something
यच्छति yacchati
More languagesFewer languages
sustain in Arabic
أَبْقَى ʔabqā, عَالَ ʕāla, يَعُولُ yaʕūlu

Examples of sustain in a sentence

  • Sam managed to sustain his erection for two straight hours.
  • We rode five farsakhs today, sustained by a single bowl of curds and tortured by the wooden saddles.1937, Robert Byron, The Road to Oxiana, London: Macmillan, Part 2, page 59:

All 40 example sentences with sustain

Synonyms of sustain

Antonyms

Forms of sustain

Verb
third-person singular presentsustains
present participlesustaining
past participlesustained
pastsustained
Noun
pluralsustains

Past tense of sustain: sustained

Origin of sustain

From Middle English susteinen, sustenen, from Old French sustenir (French soutenir), from Latin sustineō, sustinēre (“to uphold”), from sub- (“from below, up”) + teneō (“hold”, verb).

Words formed from sustain

Words that rhyme with sustain

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about sustain

What does sustain mean?
Sustain means to maintain, or keep in existence.
What is sustain in Bengali?
Sustain in Bengali is টিকিয়ে রাখা. See Sustain meaning in Bengali.
How do you use sustain in a sentence?
Sam managed to sustain his erection for two straight hours.
What part of speech is sustain?
Sustain can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce sustain?
Sustain is pronounced /səˈsteɪn/ (UK).
What is the past tense of sustain?
The past tense of sustain is sustained.

Words near sustain in the dictionary

  1. sussy
  2. sussy baka
  3. sussy bakas
  4. sustah
  5. sustahs
  6. sustain
  7. sustainabilities
  8. sustainability
  9. sustainable
  10. sustainable development
  11. sustainable developments

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sustain (page history and authors); sustain (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); sustain (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); sustain (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-sustain.ogg.

Cite this entry: “sustain.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sustain. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.