Maintenance

How to spell maintenance

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce maintenance

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does maintenance mean?

1. nounThe work of keeping something in good condition, or the act of providing ongoing support.

Maintenance in a sentence

• The landlord is responsible for the maintenance of the heating system.

• Regular car maintenance prevents expensive breakdowns later.

Where does maintenance come from?

Language of origin: French

The word travelled into English from the Old French maintenance, which described the act of keeping something up or supporting it. That noun was built on the verb maintenir, meaning 'to hold in the hand' or 'to keep up', which traces directly to the Latin phrase manu tenere, literally 'to hold by hand', from manus 'hand' and tenere 'to hold'. English adopted it in the 1300s, at first in the sense of upholding a cause or supporting a person, and only later broadened it to the modern idea of keeping a building, machine, or relationship in working order. The same tenere root for 'holding' lives on in a crowd of relatives such as 'tenant', 'retain', and 'tenacious'. The spelling trap is the unstressed middle: the second syllable comes from 'maintain' but the noun quietly drops the 'i', so it is 'mainten-ance' and never 'maintainance'.

How the word is built

• main- (from Latin manu, by hand)
• -ten- (from tenere, to hold)
• -ance (noun-forming suffix)