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Purport vs Maintain - What's the difference?

purport | maintain |

As verbs the difference between purport and maintain

is that purport is to convey, imply, or profess outwardly (often falsely) while maintain is to support (someone), to back up or assist (someone) in an action.

As a noun purport

is import, intention or purpose.

purport

English

Verb

(en verb)
  • To convey, imply, or profess outwardly (often falsely).
  • He purports himself to be an international man of affairs.
  • To intend.
  • He purported to become an international man of affairs.

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • import, intention or purpose
  • * 1748 ,
  • My practice, you say, refutes my doubts. But you mistake the purport of my question.
  • * 1843 , '', book 4, chapter I, ''Aristocracies
  • Sorrowful, phantasmal as this same Double Aristocracy of Teachers and Governors now looks, it is worth all men’s while to know that the purport of it is, and remains, noble and most real.
  • * 1939 ,
  • A child’s brain starts functioning at birth; and has, amongst its many infant convolutions, thousands of dormant atoms, into which God has put a mystic possibility for noticing an adult’s act, and figuring out its purport .
  • (obsolete) disguise; covering
  • * Spenser
  • For she her sex under that strange purport / Did use to hide.

    Anagrams

    *

    maintain

    English

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • (obsolete) To support (someone), to back up or assist (someone) in an action.
  • *:
  • *:And thenne he asked leue & wente oute of his heremytage for to mayntene his neuewe ageynst the myghty Erle / and so hit happed that this man that lyeth here dede dyd so moche by his wysedome and hardynes that the Erle was take and thre of his lordes by force of this dede man
  • To keep up; to preserve; to uphold (a state, condition etc.).
  • *, chapter=17
  • , title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=This time was most dreadful for Lilian. Thrown on her own resources and almost penniless, she maintained herself and paid the rent of a wretched room near the hospital by working as a charwoman, sempstress, anything. In a moment she had dropped to the level of a casual labourer.}}
  • *{{quote-news, year=2011, date=November 5, author=Phil Dawkes, work=BBC Sport
  • , title= QPR 2-3 Man City , passage=Mancini's men were far from their best but dug in to earn a 10th win in 11 league games and an eighth successive victory in all competitions to maintain their five-point lead at the top of the table.}}
  • *{{quote-magazine, date=2013-03, author=Nancy Langston, volume=101, issue=2, page=98
  • , magazine=(American Scientist) , title= Mining the Boreal North , passage=Reindeer are well suited to the taiga’s frigid winters. They can maintain a thermogradient between body core and the environment of up to 100 degrees, in part because of insulation provided by their fur, and in part because of counter-current vascular heat exchange systems in their legs and nasal passages.}}
  • To declare or affirm (a clause) to be true; to assert.
  • * {{quote-news, year=2012, date=April 19, author=Josh Halliday, work=the Guardian
  • , title= Free speech haven or lawless cesspool – can the internet be civilised? , passage=She maintains that the internet should face similar curbs to TV because young people are increasingly living online. "It's totally different, someone at Google watching the video from the comfort of their office in San Francisco to someone from a council house in London, where this video is happening right outside their front door."}}

    Derived terms

    * maintainability

    Antonyms

    * (to keep up) abandon

    Anagrams

    *