ppl. a. [UN-1 8.]
1. Not materially sustained or supported.
1630. Drumm. of Hawth., Flowers Sion, Hymn Passion, 9. Seeing … How vnsustain’d the Earth still steadfast stands.
1667. Milton, P. L., IX. 430. Each Flour … whose head … Hung drooping unsustained.
1725. Pope, Odyssey, XII. 517. All unsustain’d between the wave and sky, Beneath my feet the whirling billows fly.
2. Not supported by assistance, etc.
1697. Dryden, Æneis, XI. 1238. The Volscians quit the Field; And, unsustain’d, the Chiefs of Turnus yield.
1719. Young, Par. Job, 236. Hale are their young, from human frailties freed; Walk unsustain’d, and unassisted feed.
1809–14. Wordsw., Excurs., VI. 767. With a sigh She spake, yet, I believe, not unsustained By faith in glory [etc.].
1856. Kane, Arct. Expl., II. xii. 129. A penalty is denounced against … the accuser, for his unsustained prosecution.
1876. Bancroft, Hist. U.S., I. i. 17. Unsustained by Cartier, Roberval accomplished no more than a verification of previous discoveries.
3. Not maintained at a uniform level of excellence; flagging in interest.
1817. Coleridge, Biog. Lit., xiv. II. 9. An unsustained composition, from which the reader collects rapidly the general result unattracted by the component parts.
