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PlainSpell

maintenance

/ˈmeɪnt(ə)nəns/noun

maintenance is spelled M-A-I-N-T-E-N-A-N-C-E. The wrong spelling people search most is maintence: about 2,470 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 20 of all searches for the word. Maintenance is a noun meaning “Actions performed to keep some machine or system functioning or in service”. The plural of maintenance is maintenances.

How many letters and syllables are in maintenance?

Letters11: M-A-I-N-T-E-N-A-N-C-E
Syllables3 (from its American pronunciation)
In writing35 times per million words; the 2,725th most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searched7; the most searched, maintence, about 2,470 Bing searches a month (all of them)

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).

How do you spell maintenance?

Maintenance is spelled M-A-I-N-T-E-N-A-N-C-E. 7 wrong spellings are searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 2 in 10 of the searches for maintenance in either form.

maintenancethe right spelling46,530 searches a month
maintencea missing n, a missing a2,470 searches a month
maintancea missing e, a missing n2,390 searches a month
maintenencee in place of a1,010 searches a month
maintanencea in place of e, e in place of a900 searches a month
maintainancean extra a, i in place of e750 searches a month
maintanancea in place of e660 searches a month
maintenacea missing n650 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 maintenance?

Maintenance appears 35 times per million words in written English, the 2,725th 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 maintenance?

  • /ˈmeɪnt(ə)nəns/

Maintenance has 3 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-maintenance.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of maintenance

  • maintenances plural

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

What does maintenance mean?

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

noun

  1. 1

    Actions performed to keep some machine or system functioning or in service.

  2. 2

    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. 3

    UKAlimony, a periodical payment or a lump sum made or ordered to be made to a spouse after a divorce.

  4. 4

    Child support.

  5. 5

    Money required or spent to provide for the needs of a person or a family.

  6. 6

    The natural process which keeps an organism alive.

  7. 7

    colloquialEllipsis of maintenance medicine.

  8. 8

    Software updates that fix bugs and improve stability rather than adding new features.

    a maintenance release; a maintenance version

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

How do you abbreviate maintenance?

Wiktionary records 2 abbreviations of maintenance: MRO, Maint..

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

Maintenance in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchentretien, maintenance (keeping a machine or system in service – see…)
GermanInstandhaltung, Wartung (keeping a machine or system in service – see…), Unterhalt (money to provide for the means of living)
Portuguesemanutenção (keeping a machine or system in service – see…), mantimento (process of keeping an organism alive)
Spanishmantenimiento, manutención (keeping a machine or system in service – see…)

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 maintenance come from?

From Middle English 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.

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

What to look up after maintenance