Sustenance is food and drink that keep you alive. Little sustenance, seek sustenance, spiritual sustenance.
It is formal and means what keeps a body going rather than anything enjoyable, which is why it suits accounts of hardship. The figurative use — spiritual sustenance — is common and carries the same sense of the minimum needed to continue.
1nounsustenanceFood and drink that keep you alive.
“The lost hikers survived on berries and stream water, their only sustenance for a week.”
sustenance is food.
Old French sustenance comes from Latin sustinere, to hold up — sub, under, plus tenere, to hold.
Proto-Indo-European
*ten-
Latin
sustinere
Vulgar Latin
*sustenire
Old French
sustenance
Middle English
sustenaunce
English, today
sustenance
From Middle English sustenaunce, from Old French sustenance, from sustenir with the suffix -ance, from Vulgar Latin sustenire, from Latin sustinere. Compare also Latin sustinentia. Equivalent to sustain + -ance.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA