Sustainable

How to spell sustainable

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce sustainable

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sustainable mean?

1. adjectiveAble to be maintained over the long term without exhausting resources or causing lasting harm.

Sustainable in a sentence

• The company switched to sustainable packaging made from recycled materials.

• Economists doubted whether the rapid growth was sustainable over many years.

Where does sustainable come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word is built on the verb 'sustain', which English took from Old French 'sustenir' in the 1300s, itself descended from the Latin 'sustinere', meaning literally 'to hold up' or 'to support from below'. That Latin verb joins 'sus-' (a form of 'sub-', meaning 'up from below') with 'tenere', meaning 'to hold', the same root that gives us 'tenant', 'retain' and 'contain'. The original sense was physical, holding something up so it would not fall, which broadened to keeping something going over time. The adjective form with '-able', meaning 'capable of being maintained', appeared centuries later, and it surged into everyday use only in the late twentieth century with the rise of environmental concern about resources that can be kept going without being used up. The spelling trap lives in the middle: writers must remember the 'ai' of 'tain' (held over from the Latin 'tenere') and the soft '-able' ending rather than '-ible'.

How the word is built

• sus- (from sub-: up from below, from under)
• -tain (from Latin tenere: to hold)
• -able (capable of being)