the.com/maintenance
The unglamorous act of stopping entropy before it stops you.
means The routine work of keeping something — a machine, a relationship, a body — running by fixing small problems before they become big ones.
from From French maintenance, built on the verb maintenir, 'to hold by the hand' — from Latin manu tenere (manus, 'hand,' plus tenere, 'to hold'). The original image is literal: keeping something upright by hand, holding it steady so it doesn't fall. The sense drifted from physical support to the ongoing act of sustaining anything in working order.
- word root
- manu tenere literally means to hold by hand
- infrastructure truth
- most bridge failures trace to deferred maintenance, not design
- economics of it
- preventive upkeep costs far less than emergency repair
- psychology angle
- maintenance feels invisible precisely when it is working