Spare

How to spell spare

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce spare

What does spare mean?

1. adjectiveKept in reserve and available when needed, beyond what is currently in use.
2. verbTo give or make available something one can do without, or to refrain from harming or punishing.

Spare in a sentence

• adjective

  She always keeps a spare key hidden near the back door.

• verb

  If you can spare a few minutes, I would value your advice.

• adjective

  The hotel offered us a spare blanket for the cold night.

• verb

  The judge agreed to spare him a custodial sentence given his age.

Where does spare come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Spare comes straight from the native Old English stock, where the verb sparian meant 'to refrain from harming or to use sparingly', and the related adjective spær carried the sense of 'frugal' or 'scanty'. These traced back to a common Germanic root shared with the Old High German sparon and the modern German sparen, 'to save', and ultimately to an ancient idea of holding something back rather than spending it. The two strands fused in English into a single family: the verb meaning 'to hold back from using up' (so, to leave a person unharmed, or to give what one can do without) and the adjective meaning 'kept in reserve' or 'lean and meagre'. From the reserve sense grew the familiar noun, the spare item set aside in case the first one fails. Because the word is so old and so plain, its spelling is mercifully regular, the only mild trap being the silent final -e that turns 'spar' into 'spare'.

How the word is built

• spar- (from Old English sparian/spær: to hold back, frugal)
• -e