different between sustain vs upstay

English

Etymology

From Middle English susteinen, sustenen, from Old French sustenir (French soutenir), from Latin sustine?, sustin?re (“to uphold”), from sub- (“from below, up”) + tene? (“hold”, verb).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /s??ste?n/
• Hyphenation: sus?tain
• Rhymes: -e?n

Verb

sustain (third-person singular simple present sustains, present participle sustaining, simple past and past participle sustained)

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.

   • 1949, George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Part Two, Chapter 9,^[1]

     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

   • 1611, King James Version of the Bible, Nehemiah 9:21,^[2]

     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.

   • 1937, Robert Byron, The Road to Oxiana, London: Macmillan, Part 2, p. 59,^[3]

     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). (The addition of quotations indicative of this usage is being sought:)
4. (transitive) To experience or suffer (an injury, etc.).

   The building sustained major damage in the earthquake.

   • c. 1612, William Shakespeare and John Fletcher, Henry VIII, Act III, Scene 2,^[4]

     […] if you omit

     The offer of this time, I cannot promise

     But that you shall sustain moe new disgraces,

     With these you bear already.

   • 1697, John Dryden (translator), The Aeneid, Book 7, lines 592-593, in The Works of Virgil, London: Jacob Tonson, p. 418,^[5]

     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

   • 1876, Henry Martyn Robert, Pocket Manual of Rules of Order for Deliberative Assemblies, Chicago: Griggs, 1885, Section 61 (e), p. 167,^[6]

     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 keep from falling; to bear; to uphold; to support.

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

7. To aid, comfort, or relieve; to vindicate.
   • c. 1605, William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act III, Scene 3,^[7]

     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.

   • 1697, John Dryden (translator), The Aeneid, Book 6, lines 1122-1123, in The Works of Virgil, London: Jacob Tonson, p. 395,^[8]

     His Sons, who seek the Tyrant to sustain,

     And long for Arbitrary Lords again,

Derived terms

• sustainable
• sustainedly
• sustaining

Related terms

Translations

Noun

sustain (plural sustains)

1. (music) A mechanism which can be used to hold a note, as the right pedal on a piano.
   • 2011, Chuck Eddy, Rock and Roll Always Forgets (page 265)

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

Anagrams

• issuant

English

Etymology

From up- +? stay.

Verb

upstay (third-person singular simple present upstays, present participle upstaying, simple past and past participle upstayed)

1. (now rare) To sustain, support.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.xii:

     those two villeins, which her steps vpstayd, / When her weake feete could scarcely her sustaine, / And fading vitall powers gan to fade, / Her forward still with torture did constraine […]

   • 1820, The River Duddon A Series of Sonnets, XXVIII, Journey Renewed:

     Close to the vital seat of human clay; / Glad meetings, tender partings, that upstay

   • 1910, The Aeneid of Virgil as translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor:

     In front, a massive gateway threats the sky, / And posts of solid adamant upstay / An iron tower, firm-planted to defy / All force, divine or human. Night and day,

   • 1917, Henry Charles Beeching, The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse, 246, The Tree of Life

     Lighten, O sword divine, to clear my way, / And thou, O happy heart, upstay

Anagrams

• stay up