It's the word of the day for November 28th.
Today's word is sustain, spelled S-U-S-T-A-I-N.
Sustain is a verb.
To sustain someone or something is to provide what is needed for that person or thing to exist or continue.
Sustain also means to hold up the weight of, to suffer or endure, or to confirm or prove.
In legal contexts, to sustain something is to decide or state that it is proper, legal, or fair.
Here's the word used in a sentence from the Chicago Daily Herald.
Pushing falling leaves into garden beds to insulate plants and nourish the soil will also shelter hibernating insects that in turn will sustain ground-feeding birds.
It's much better for the ecosystem and easier for the gardener than bagging them up and sending them to a landfill.
The word sustain is both handy and hearty.
Its use has been sustained since the days of Middle English.
It traces back to the Latin verb sustenere meaning to hold up or to sustain by its utility across a variety of consequential subjects from environmental protections to legal proceedings to medical reports.
The word is so prevalent and so varied in its application, in fact,
that it enjoys sustained high-ranking as one of our top lookups,
evidence of our reader's sustained commitment to,
well, sustaining themselves with information about words.
With your Word of the Day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.