English

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Etymology

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From Anglo-Norman maintenour, Old French mainteneor, from maintenir (to maintain); with later remodelling of the suffix after -er. By surface analysis, maintain +‎ -er.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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maintainer (plural maintainers)

  1. Someone who keeps or upholds something; a steward.
    He become the maintainer of the software project.
  2. A person who does maintenance work.
    • 2016 May 26, Steve Almasy and Chris Boyette, “Lost hiker’s message: Please call husband when my body is found”, in CNN[1]:
      “In somm trouble. Got off trail to go to br. Now lost. Can u call AMC to c if a trail maintainer can help me. Somewhere north of woods road. Xox,” she wrote.
    • 2021 October 14, Oren Liebermann, “CENTCOM disputes Air Force account of attempted hijacking at Kabul airport during Afghanistan evacuation”, in CNN[2]:
      “To stay open, the senior enlisted leader of U.S. Forces-Afghanistan Forward said he needed people to cover security,” Duncan wrote. “Personnel Recovery Task Force (PRTF) Pilots, maintainers and support personnel donned their vests, helmets and M-4 rifles and manned defensive fighting positions.”
    • 2022 January 26, Philip Haigh, “The 'holes in the Swiss cheese' that led to train derailment”, in RAIL, number 949, page 46:
      RAIB looked at why the washers were missing. This took it into the relationship between the wagon's owner and maintainers.
    • 2025 January 30, Helen Regan, Taylor Romine, Dalia Faheid, et. al., “January 30, 2025 - DC plane collision news”, in CNN[3]:
      Muehlendorf told CNN that O’Hara was a crew chief by trade, explaining that his “military occupational specialty was a 15T and he was originally trained to be a maintainer of Black Hawk helicopters.”
  3. (dentistry) A device used to keep teeth in a given position.

Derived terms

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Translations

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See also

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