Skip to main content
PlainSpell

maintain

/meɪnˈteɪn/verb

maintain is spelled M-A-I-N-T-A-I-N. The wrong spelling people search most is mantain: about 110 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 21 of all searches for the word. Maintain is a verb meaning “To keep up; to preserve; to uphold (a state, condition etc.)”.

How many letters and syllables are in maintain?

Letters8: M-A-I-N-T-A-I-N
Syllables2 (from its American pronunciation)
In writing45 times per million words; the 2,253rd most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searched1; the most searched, mantain, about 110 Bing searches a month (all of them)
Same letters

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.

How do you spell maintain?

Maintain is spelled M-A-I-N-T-A-I-N. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 21 of the searches for maintain in either form.

maintainthe right spelling2,180 searches a month
mantaina missing i110 searches a month

Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.

How common is maintain?

Maintain appears 45 times per million words in written English, the 2,253rd most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How do you pronounce maintain?

  • /meɪnˈteɪn/
  • /mənˈteɪn/

Maintain has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-maintain.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

What rhymes with maintain?

No other word on PlainSpell ends in the same sounds as maintain.

Spelled with the same letters in another order: amanitin.

Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).

Forms of maintain

  • maintains present, singular, he/she/it
  • maintaining participle, present
  • maintained participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does maintain mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

verb

  1. 1

    To keep up; to preserve; to uphold (a state, condition etc.).

    maintain contact

  2. 2

    To declare or affirm (a clause) to be true; to assert.

  3. 3

    To keep in good condition and working order.

  4. 4

    obsoleteTo support (someone), to back up or assist (someone) in an action.

  5. 5

    slangTo keep composed; to keep one's head up; to stay confident, strong, self-assured; to avoid being a victim; to keep oneself from falling apart.

    No matter what, you gotta maintain.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Maintain in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchentretenir (to keep up), maintenir (to declare or affirm a point of view to be true)
Germanunterhalten, warten, beibehalten, aufrechterhalten (to keep up)
Portuguesemanter (to keep up), afirmar (to declare or affirm a point of view to be true)
Spanishmantener, manutener (to keep up), sostener (to declare or affirm a point of view to be true)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does maintain come from?

From Middle English mayntenen, from Old French maintenir, from Late Latin manūteneō, manūtenēre (“I support”), from Latin manū (“with/in/by the hand”, ablative of manus) + tenēre (“to hold”).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What to look up after maintain