How to spell sustain

hear itsus·tain/sə'steɪn/verbSchwa and roots

What it means: To provide support or nourishment.

In a sentence: The big tree can sustain many birds on its branches.

The part people get wrong

Watch for an unstressed vowel that is hard to hear. Often misspelled as sustane or sustaen.

Same family: sustainable, sustainability, sustained, sustaining, sustainment. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: Sustain comes from Latin "sustinēre," meaning "to hold up or support," from "sub" (from below) + "tenere" (to hold). Over time, its meaning expanded from physically holding something up to keeping an action or state going over a long period.

Patterns it uses: The unstressed vowel (schwa)

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