self-maintainingadj.

1830 Morning Chron. 24 June He knew the elements of Greece not to be self-consistent, nor self-maintaining; and that as she could not be self-dependent, she could not be independent.

1890 Boston Med. & Surg. Jrnl. 22 May 509/2 For self-respecting and generally self-maintaining people, overtaken by incurable disease, accommodations other than those of common paupers are a great desideratum.

1933 Mind 42 146 Immortality demands self-maintaining effort and formed character.

1959 G. D. Mitchell Sociol. vi. 101 It can thus be seen that witchcraft as a system of beliefs and practices is self-maintaining.

2004 S. McMullen Glass Dragons v. 229 In fairs, a sponsor sets up a table with a barrel and a bench with three or four musicians, and the whole show is more or less self-maintaining from then on.

1841 Lancet 23 Oct. 119/1 The self-maintaining power of these cellules, their nourishment and growth, has been seen to exist in the primitive cells of the ovum long before their possession of a vascular or circulatory system could be demonstrated.

1889 Nature 17 Jan. 287/2 The vegetative or self-maintaining activities are opposed to, and balanced by, the reproductive or species-maintaining ones.

1964 J. Z. Young Model of Brain iii. 25 The brain is the central controller of a self-maintaining homeostat.

1986 L. Margulis & D. Sagan Origins Sex xi. 177 The self-maintaining processes of organisms are far more complicated than even the most sophisticated computers.

2016 P. L. Luisi Emergence of Life (ed. 2) vii. 173 A thermodynamically open system that is self-maintaining due to an internal regeneration of components from within.