Encourage
Encourage verb - To help the growth or development of.
Usage example: asserted that the government should be encouraging small businesses, not smothering them with regulations
Support is a synonym for encourage in promote topic. In some cases you can use "Support" instead a verb "Encourage", when it comes to topics like help, aid, assistance.
Nearby Words: encouragement, encouraging
Support
Support verb - To provide (someone) with what is useful or necessary to achieve an end.
Usage example: sent reinforcements to support the troops deployed overseas
Encourage is a synonym for support in promote topic. You can use "Encourage" instead a verb "Support", if it concerns topics such as provide for, back, give moral support to.
Mutual synonyms
Common collocations
Both words in one sentence
- To be fair, they encourage and support this; the MediaWiki software is under a Free Software license.
Source: Follow The Leader / Other - Adding another Sony example to the lot already present on this page: when they first started out with their portable music players, Sony didn't support the MP3 standard due to their historical unwillingness to support anything that could encourage piracy of any kind.
Source: Darth Wiki / Idiot Programming - Tessa Cole in Survival of the Fittest believes the titular game to be a false flag operation by the US Government meant to encourage compliance and military support.
Source: False Flag Operation
Cite this Source
Support and Encourage. (2016). Retrieved 2026, July 21, from https://thesaurus.plus/related/encourage/support
Encourage & Support. N.p., 2016. Web. 21 Jul. 2026. <https://thesaurus.plus/related/encourage/support>.
Support or Encourage. 2016. Accessed July 21, 2026. https://thesaurus.plus/related/encourage/support.
Google Ngram Viewer shows how "encourage" and "support" have occurred on timeline