The coral reef ecosystem relies on a delicate balance of nutrients to sustain its diverse marine life.
珊瑚礁生态系统依靠微妙的营养平衡来维持其多样的海洋生物。
Film critic Helena Marchetti praises a director's use of extremely long takes with no cuts, arguing this technique forces actors to sustain genuine emotional performances for minutes at a time.
From a Cross-Text Connections question · Craft and Structure
Acting coach Julian Ferro, who has trained performers for similar productions, cautions that sustaining a performance across an extremely long take can also lead exhausted actors to give less nuanced, more generalized performances by the take's final minutes.
From a Cross-Text Connections question · Craft and Structure
An essay on public libraries opens with a montage-like series of short vignettes—a retiree reading newspapers, a child at story hour, a job-seeker using a computer—before settling into a sustained argument about libraries' role as community infrastructure.
From a Text Structure and Purpose question · Craft and Structure
Which choice best defines “sustain”?
A — To support, maintain, or keep something going. “sustain” means to support, maintain, or keep something going.
Which word means “to support, maintain, or keep something going”?
A — sustain. “sustain” means to support, maintain, or keep something going.
sustain — to support, maintain, or keep something going. In Chinese: 维持，支持.
sustain is pronounced /səˈsteɪn/.
The coral reef ecosystem relies on a delicate balance of nutrients to sustain its diverse marine life. (珊瑚礁生态系统依靠微妙的营养平衡来维持其多样的海洋生物。)
maintain, support, uphold — all close in meaning to sustain (to support, maintain, or keep something going).
abandon, cease — each the opposite of sustain (to support, maintain, or keep something going).
Yes. sustain is on the SAT Prep Easy list — mid-frequency academic words that do get tested. The Digital SAT does not test vocabulary in isolation; words like this one are tested through Words in Context questions, where you choose the word that completes a passage most logically and precisely.
sus(up)+tain(hold)