sustaining

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of sustain.

   The charity focused on sustaining its food program through the winter.

   Sustaining such rapid growth proved difficult for the small company.

   Note

   One -ing form does two jobs. It is a participle after be (the firm is sustaining losses) and a gerund that acts like a noun (sustaining growth is hard). It carries every meaning of sustain, from nourishing to suffering an injury to a judge upholding an objection. Before a noun, as in "a sustaining purpose" from Harold Bindloss's The Dust of Conflict (1907), it moves toward the adjective meaning "supportive".

2. 2
   adjective

   Providing support, nourishment, or the means to keep something going.

   The soldiers relied on sustaining rations during the long march.

   She found his quiet encouragement deeply sustaining through the crisis.

   Similarnourishing, supportive, comforting

   Note

   An adjective that serves both the soul and the stomach. Milton's "sustaining hopes" (1641) and the "sustaining soul" that Dickens's David Copperfield finds missing within him are about inner strength. Josephine Tey's The Man in the Queue (1929) passes round "sustaining bits of chocolate." It is gradable (more sustaining, most sustaining) and works after a verb as well: the meal was sustaining.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The process of keeping something in existence or holding it up over time.

   The sustaining of life aboard the station depended on recycled water and air.

   Careful budgeting allowed the sustaining of the program for another decade.

   Similarmaintenance, preservation, continuation, support

   Note

   Here the word is a full noun, one that can take an article and even a plural. Alan Ryan's On Politics (2012) sets it against founding moments: "Beginnings are very different from sustainings." That plural shows it has moved past the verb's gerund. A gerund takes a direct object (sustaining life), while this noun takes of (the sustaining of life).

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