maintenance - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

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]

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.
6. (biology) The natural process which keeps an organism alive.
7. (Philippines, medicine, colloquial) Ellipsis of maintenance medicine.

• “maintenance”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “maintenance”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
• “maintenance”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

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

• IPA^(key): /mɛ̃t.nɑ̃s/
• Rhymes: -ɑ̃s

maintenance f (plural maintenances)

1. maintenance

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