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say it: MAYN-tuh-nuhns
maintenance is a noun meaning "activity involved in maintaining something in good working order". It carries 5 recorded senses.
activity involved in maintaining something in good working order
“he wrote the manual on car care”
means of maintenance of a family or group
court-ordered support paid by one spouse to another after they are separated
the act of sustaining life by food or providing a means of subsistence
“they were in want of sustenance”
“fishing was their main sustainment”
the unauthorized interference in a legal action by a person having no interest in it (as by helping one party with money or otherwise to continue the action) so as to obstruct justice or promote unnecessary litigation or unsettle the peace of the community
“unlike champerty, criminal maintenance does not necessarily involve personal profit”
law
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for maintenance come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.