sustain

verb

1. (transitive)To maintain, or keep in existence.

   “The professor had trouble sustaining students’ interest until the end of her lectures.”

   “The city came under sustained attack by enemy forces.”

   “Sam managed to sustain his erection for two straight hours.”

   “All the beliefs, habits, tastes, emotions, mental attitudes that characterize our time are really designed to sustain the mystique of the Party and prevent the true nature of present-day society from being perceived.”

2. (transitive)To provide for or nourish.

   “provisions to sustain an army”

   “Yea, forty years didst thou sustain them in the wilderness, so that they lacked nothing; their clothes waxed not old, and their feet swelled not.”

   “We rode five farsakhs today, sustained by a single bowl of curds and tortured by the wooden saddles.”

3. (transitive)To encourage or sanction (something).
4. (transitive)To experience or suffer (an injury, etc.).

   “The building sustained major damage in the earthquake.”

   “[…] if you omit The offer of this time, I cannot promise But that you shall sustain moe new disgraces, With these you bear already.”

   “Shall Turnus then such endless Toil sustain, In fighting Fields, and conquer Towns in vain:”

5. (transitive)To confirm, prove, or corroborate; to uphold.

   “to sustain a charge, an accusation, or a proposition”

   “After the vote is taken, the Chairman states that the decision of the Chair is sustained, or reversed, as the case may be.”

6. To allow, accept, or admit (e.g. an objection or motion) as valid.
7. To keep from falling; to bear; to uphold; to support.

   “A foundation sustains the superstructure; an animal sustains a load; a rope sustains a weight.”

8. To aid, comfort, or relieve; to vindicate.

   “When I desir’d their leave that I might pity him, they took from me the use of mine own house, charg’d me on pain of perpetual displeasure neither to speak of him, entreat for him, nor any way sustain him.”

   “His Sons, who seek the Tyrant to sustain, And long for Arbitrary Lords again,”

noun

1. A mechanism which can be used to hold a note, as the right pedal on a piano.

   “To call this music bland is to ignore the down-the-drain vocal fade-aways, the extended sax sustains […]”

2. (abbreviation, alt-of, clipping)Clipping of sustainability.