maintenance

From Middle English mayntenaunce, from Old French maintenance, from maintenir, from Latin manus tenēre (“to hold in the hand”). By surface analysis, maintain +‎ -ance.

Note that maintain has undergone a sound and spelling change, hence is spelt with -tain-, rather than the -ten- still found in maintenance.

• IPA^(key): /ˈmeɪnt(ə)nəns/, /ˈmeɪntɪnəns/, [ˈmẽɪ̃(n)ʔ(ə)nəns]

• Audio (US)

  (file)

maintenance (usually uncountable, plural maintenances)

1. Actions performed to keep some machine or system functioning or in service.
   • 2019 October, Ian Walmsley, “Cleaning up”, in Modern Railways, page 42:

     They are all preventable by proper maintenance, but non-safety critical maintenance has to be evaluated, so failures are an accepted penalty for keeping maintenance costs down.

2. (law) A tort and (in some jurisdictions) an offence committed when a third party who does not have a bona fide interest in a lawsuit provides help or acquires an interest to a litigant's lawsuit.
3. (law, UK) Alimony, a periodical payment or a lump sum made or ordered to be made to a spouse after a divorce.
4. (law) Child support.
5. Money required or spent to provide for the needs of a person or a family.
   • 1815 [1802], William Wordsworth, Resolution and Independence:

     From Pond to Pond he roamed, from moor to moor; / Housing, with God's good help, by choice or chance: / And in this way he gained an honest maintenance.

6. (biology) The natural process which keeps an organism alive.

• “maintenance”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “maintenance”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
• “maintenance”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

From maintenir (“to maintain”) +‎ -ance.

• IPA^(key): /mɛ̃t.nɑ̃s/

• Audio (Paris)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɑ̃s

maintenance f (plural maintenances)

1. maintenance

• “maintenance”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.