maintain
Americanverb (used with object)
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maintains,
present (3rd person singular)
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maintained,
past participle, past
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maintaining
present participle
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to keep in existence or continuance; preserve; retain.
to maintain good relations with neighboring countries.
- Antonyms:
- discontinue
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to keep in an appropriate condition, operation, or force; keep unimpaired.
to maintain order; to maintain public highways.
- Synonyms:
- keep up
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to keep in a specified state, position, etc..
to maintain a correct posture; to maintain good health.
-
He maintained that the country was going downhill.
- Synonyms:
- asseverate
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to support in speech or argument, as a statement or proposition.
- Antonyms:
- contradict
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to keep or hold against attack.
to maintain one's ground.
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to provide for the upkeep or support of; carry the expenses of.
to maintain a family.
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to sustain or support.
not enough water to maintain life.
verb
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to continue or retain; keep in existence
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to keep in proper or good condition
to maintain a building
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to support a style of living
the money maintained us for a month
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(takes a clause as object) to state or assert
he maintained that Talbot was wrong
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to defend against contradiction; uphold
she maintained her innocence
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to defend against physical attack
Usage
What are other ways to say maintain? To maintain something is to keep it in existence, or to preserve it. How does maintain compare to the synonyms support, sustain, and uphold? Learn more on Thesaurus.com.
Synonym Usage
Maintain, assert, aver, allege, hold, state all mean to express an opinion, judgment, or position. Maintain carries the implications of both firmness and persistence in declaring or supporting a conviction: She maintained her client's innocence even in the face of damaging evidence. Assert suggests assurance, confidence, and sometimes aggressiveness in the effort to persuade others to agree with or accept one's position: He asserted again and again the government's right to control the waterway. Aver, like assert, implies confident declaration and sometimes suggests a firmly positive or peremptory tone; in legal use aver means “to allege as fact”: to aver that the evidence is incontrovertible. Allege indicates a statement without evidence to support it, and thus can imply doubt as to the validity or accuracy of an assertion: The official is alleged to have been unaware of the crime. Hold means simply to have or express a conviction or belief: We hold these truths to be self-evident; She held that her rights had been violated. State usually suggests a declaration that is forthright and unambiguous: He stated his reasons in clear, simple language.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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maintainabilitynoun
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maintainernoun
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premaintainverb (used with object)
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undermaintainverb (used with object)
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maintainableadjective
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self-maintainedadjective
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self-maintainingadjective
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undermaintainedadjective
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unmaintainableadjective
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unmaintainedadjective
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well-maintainedadjective
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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maintainsimple
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maintainssimple
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have maintainedperfect
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has maintainedperfect
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am maintainingprogressive
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are maintainingprogressive
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is maintainingprogressive
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have been maintainingperfect progressive
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has been maintainingperfect progressive
Past
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maintainedsimple
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had maintainedperfect
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was maintainingprogressive
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were maintainingprogressive
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had been maintainingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of maintain
First recorded in 1200–50; Middle English mainteinen from Old French maintenir, ultimately from Medieval Latin manūtenēre, Latin manū tenēre literally, “to hold in hand,” equivalent to manū, ablative of manus “hand” + tenēre “to hold”; see manual, tenet
Explanation
Maintain means to keep the same––keep steady, keep up, or keep going. Sure, you can ride your bike super fast on a flat surface, but it can be hard to maintain that speed, or keep the same speed, going up a hill. When you maintain a strict study schedule, you stick to it. When you maintain your car in good working order, you take good care of it. If you maintain records of your business activity, it means you make notes of your sales and expenses. If a teacher maintains order in the classroom, she never lets disruptions get out of hand. If you maintain your family, you keep them in food, shelter and clothing. If you maintain that eating animals is cruel, you keep that position.
Vocabulary lists containing maintain
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
By buffering those short-term fluctuations, the kidney might help maintain a more consistent individual chemical profile in urine.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 20, 2026
The ability of the city to respond to someone’s pleas for help is incredibly important in ensuring that we maintain the trust of the public.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 20, 2026
She said since buying the land, the group had organised litter picking, butterfly counts and an ecological survey in order to plan how best to maintain the field so that local wildlife could thrive.
From BBC ● Sep. 20, 2026
As it turns out, equity is difficult to maintain in such an absurd age.
From Salon ● Sep. 19, 2026
I’d timed his bathing session once, to maintain the sanctity of indisputable facts, and clocked an entire five minutes of him picking away claw jam with his teeth.
From "Sir Fig Newton and the Science of Persistence" by Sonja Thomas
To reflect the won’s strength and higher raw-material costs, Daiwa lowers its 2026-2027 earnings forecasts for the stock and trims its target price to 560,000 won from 580,000 won but maintains a buy rating.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 17, 2026
China still maintains a 10 percent levy on all US goods, with additional rates applicable in other specific sectors, such as 15 percent on liquid natural gas.
From Barron's ● Sep. 17, 2026
The central bank’s mandate is to set the target for the overnight rate at a level that achieves and maintains 2% inflation.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 16, 2026
"China's economy continues to show diverging signals, as consumption and investment remain weak while industrial production maintains the momentum," Zhiwei Zhang, President and Chief Economist at Pinpoint Asset Management, wrote in an analyst note.
From Barron's ● Sep. 15, 2026
Those of us who frequent the band room have long suspected that Becca maintains her lovely figure by eating nothing but the souls of kittens and the dreams of impoverished children.
From "Paper Towns" by John Green
Their results indicate that T. rex maintained a body temperature of about 97 degrees Fahrenheit, remarkably close to that of humans.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 20, 2026
Allie Carr, a Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices agent in Cleveland, said it pays to make your house look meticulously maintained.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 17, 2026
Mummolo maintained that the “overwhelming majority” of the arrest records included a discussion of flight risk but added that agents were “not required to document that.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 16, 2026
Council members agreed that freedom of navigation in the Red Sea must be maintained to prevent disruption to global supply chains.
From BBC ● Sep. 16, 2026
He maintained that he could tell the strength of a player by the way he handled the pieces.
From "Endgame" by Frank Brady
Once Roman settles into its orbit around L2, maintaining its position should require only periodic station-keeping burns about once every 28 days.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 18, 2026
Analysts said satellite imagery showed that Saudi Arabia had expanded facilities for maintaining and manufacturing the missiles.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 16, 2026
The couple have raised their family on a farm in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York, a property the “Mean Girls” star bought in 2013, while also maintaining properties in Los Angeles and Manhattan.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 16, 2026
For Chaudhuri, despite market expectations, the Fed should be holding rates, maintaining a level between 3.50% to 3.75% because inflation is actually moderating.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 16, 2026
The Hab is normally a dome, with flexible support poles maintaining the arch and rigid, folding floor material to keep its base flat.
From "The Martian" by Andy Weir
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
