husbanded

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of husband.

   The village husbanded its grain reserves through a difficult harvest.

   She had husbanded her energy for the final climb.

   Note

   One spelling serves both the past tense (the village husbanded its grain) and the participle after have or be (she had husbanded, it was husbanded). The verb is transitive, so something is always being husbanded: energy, money, grain. Its older senses, to farm land and to provide someone with a husband, are obsolete or archaic. In modern prose the form almost always means careful, frugal management.

2. 2
   adjective

   Conserved; kept and managed carefully so as not to be used up.

   The carefully husbanded woodland yielded timber for generations.

   Husbanded reserves of grain saw the city through the long siege.

   Similarconserved, preserved, saved

   Oppositewasted, depleted

   Note

   Economists use the word for a resource that is deliberately held back rather than spent, as in husbanded reserves or husbanded stocks. It does not compare: a resource is husbanded or it is not, so the degree comes from adverbs like carefully rather than from more or most. It sits close to the past-tense verb. The difference is position. Before a noun it describes the resource, and after had or was it reports the act of conserving.

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