sustenance

Etymology

From Middle English, borrowed from Old French, from sustenir (14c) with the suffix -ance, from Vulgar Latin *sustenire, from Latin sustinere. Cf. also Late Latin sustinentia.

noun

1. Something that provides support or nourishment.
   More than a mere source of Promethean sustenance to thwart the cold and cook one's meat, wood was quite simply mankind's first industrial and manufacturing fuel. 2006, Edwin Black, chapter 2, in Internal Combustion