Sustainability

How to spell sustainability

14 letters · 6 syllables

How to pronounce sustainability

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sustainability mean?

1. nounThe ability to be maintained over the long term, especially without depleting natural resources or causing lasting harm.

Sustainability in a sentence

• The company published a report on the sustainability of its supply chain.

• Investors now weigh long-term sustainability alongside quarterly profit.

Where does sustainability come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is built on 'sustain', which English took from the Old French sostenir in the 1300s, itself descended from the Latin sustinere. That Latin verb combined sub-, meaning 'up from below', with tenere, meaning 'to hold', so its literal sense was to hold something up or keep it going from underneath. The same tenere root quietly supports a whole family of English words, including 'maintain', 'retain', and 'tenant', all of them about holding in some way. The abstract noun 'sustainability' is a much later, modern formation, stacking the suffix -able onto sustain and then -ity on top of that, and it surged in popularity only from the late twentieth century in environmental and economic writing. Spelling it correctly means remembering the 'ai' in the buried 'tain' and resisting the urge to collapse the long -ability tail, where the two unstressed schwa vowels hide.

How the word is built

• sus- (from sub-, up from below)
• tain (from Latin tenere: to hold)
• -able (capable of)
• -ity (noun of quality)