sparer

Pluralsparers

1. 1
   adjective

   Comparative of spare.

   The renovated gallery felt sparer, its walls stripped of nearly all decoration.

   His later poems are sparer, trimming away every unnecessary word.

   Note

   Only the senses of spare that come in degrees take this form comfortably: scant, austere, frugal. A room, a diet or a prose style can be sparer than another because more has been stripped away. A spare tire or a spare room, held in reserve or unoccupied, hardly can. The same spelling also gives the agent noun, so context decides: sparer prose is the adjective, a sparer of lives the noun.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A person or thing that refrains from harming, killing, punishing, or using something up.

   The conquering general proved an unexpected sparer of the captured city's inhabitants.

   As a careful sparer of resources, the foreman let nothing on the site go to waste.

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