sustenance means something that provides support or nourishment. It carries an Arena rating of 1581, earned across 2 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, sustenance ranks #1,896 of 42,762 for Qualifying, #2,395 of 17,134 for Most Malleable Words, #2,915 of 17,130 for Most Beautiful Words, #4,283 of 17,126 for Most Elegant Words.
sustenance is pronounced /ˈsʌs.tə.nəns/.
Why “sustenance” is a great word
That which provides support, nourishment, or the basic necessities for maintaining life. Its lineage flows from the Latin *sustinere* (to hold up, support, sustain), through Vulgar Latin *sustenire* and Old French *sustenir*, before arriving as the Middle English *sustenaunce* with the suffix *-ance*. Unlike "subsistence," which implies the bare minimum scraped from the earth by one's own labor, or "nutrition," which speaks to the clinical components of health, sustenance is the broader, more humane provision. It is the coarse bread shared in a trench, the thin broth steaming in a cold room, the remembered taste of a wild berry—not merely fuel, but the quiet promise of continued existence, a tangible answer to the ancient question of how we are held up.
Etymology
From Middle English sustenaunce, from Old French sustenance, from sustenir with the suffix -ance, from Vulgar Latin *sustenire, from Latin sustinere. Compare also Late Latin sustinentia. Equivalent to sustain + -ance.
noun
- Something that provides support or nourishment.e.g.“More than a mere source of Promethean sustenance to thwart the cold and cook one's meat, wood was quite simply mankind's first industrial and manufacturing fuel.” — 2006, Edwin Black, chapter 2, in Internal Combustion:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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