Subsistence

How to spell subsistence

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce subsistence

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does subsistence mean?

1. nounThe minimum food, money, or resources needed to stay alive and keep going.

Subsistence in a sentence

• The remote village relied on subsistence farming to feed itself.

• The modest pension barely covered her monthly subsistence.

Where does subsistence come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb subsistere, which combined sub, meaning 'under' or 'from below', with sistere, meaning 'to stand firm' or 'to remain in place'. In late Latin the related noun subsistentia came to mean 'existence' or the state of continuing to be, and it carried a philosophical flavour of something standing on its own. English borrowed it in the fifteenth century, at first for abstract notions of existence and reality, before the more practical sense settled in: the minimum food, money, and resources needed to keep oneself alive. The same sist root, the idea of standing, also runs through everyday relatives such as 'insist', 'persist', and 'resist'. Remembering that buried sist (to stand) helps explain the tricky middle of the word, where two s sounds and an unstressed schwa make it easy to misspell.

How the word is built

• sub- (under, from below)
• sist (from Latin sistere: to stand, remain)
• -ence (noun suffix)