英和和英

語源

From 中期英語 mayntenaunce, from Old French maintenance, from maintenir, from Latin manus tenēre (“to hold in the hand”). By surface analysis, maintain +‎ -ance.

Note that maintain has undergone a sound and spelling change, hence is spelt with -tain-, rather than the -ten- still found in maintenance.

発音

• IPA: /ˈmeɪnt(ə)nəns/, /ˈmeɪntɪnəns/, [ˈmẽɪ̃(n)ʔ(ə)nəns]

名詞

maintenance (usually uncountable, plural maintenances)

1. Actions performed to keep some machine or system functioning or in service.
   • 2019 October, Ian Walmsley, “Cleaning up”, in Modern Railways, page 42:

     They are all preventable by proper maintenance, but non-safety critical maintenance has to be evaluated, so failures are an accepted penalty for keeping maintenance costs down.

2. (law) A tort and (in some jurisdictions) an offence committed when a third party who does not have a bona fide interest in a lawsuit provides help or acquires an interest to a litigant's lawsuit.
3. (law, UK) Alimony, a periodical payment or a lump sum made or ordered to be made to a spouse after a divorce.
4. (law) Child support.
5. Money required or spent to provide for the needs of a person or a family.
   • 1815 [1802], William Wordsworth, Resolution and Independence:

     From Pond to Pond he roamed, from moor to moor; / Housing, with God's good help, by choice or chance: / And in this way he gained an honest maintenance.

6. (biology) The natural process which keeps an organism alive.
7. (Philippines, medicine, colloquial) Ellipsis of maintenance medicine.
8. (software engineering, attributive) Software updates that fix bugs and improve stability rather than adding new features.

   a maintenance release; a maintenance version

派生語

関連する語

Further reading

• “maintenance”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “maintenance”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
• “maintenance”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.