Also erron. -sion. [A modern formation coined, after the analogy of retain, retention, detain, detention, to express senses derived immediately from certain spec. senses of SUSTAIN v., and with the purpose of avoiding the general implications of sustentation.
Sustencyon in ed. 1542 of Boorde’s Dyetary, vi. (1870), 241 is app. a misprint; edd. 1557 (?) and 1562 read sustentacion, -tion.]
1. The action of sustaining or keeping up a condition, feeling, etc.; the holding-on of a musical note.
1868. Pall Mall Budget, 10 Oct., 66. In the very highest orator, an unlaboured sustention of passion or emotion naturally expresses itself in long and sustained form.
1870. Lowell, Study Wind., 277. Pity, a feeling capable of prolonged sustention.
1883. Mrs. Watts Hughes, in 19th Cent., May, 863. The emission and sustension of sound are subjects of extreme difficulty to singers.
2. The quality of being sustained in argument or style.
1871. Morley, Condorcet, in Crit. Misc., Ser. I. 98. Condorcet becomes rapturous as he tells in a paragraph of fine sustention [etc.].
1876. J. C. Morison, in Macm. Mag., XXXIV. 94. ‘Sustained,’ in this fashion, Macaulay certainly is not. But in another and a better form of sustension Macaulay is a master.
