spares

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of spare.

   The mechanic ordered new spares for the broken engine.

   She rolled two spares in a row to climb the leaderboard.

   Note

   The -s plural belongs mostly to the countable meanings: spare parts and spare tires, a placket in a gown, a superfluous or second-best person. The abstract senses of restraint, moderation and frugal use behave like uncountable nouns and rarely take a plural, so a reader who meets spares can usually rule them out.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of spare.

   The new system spares workers hours of repetitive data entry each week.

   Whenever a flood threatens, the river spares the higher fields on the eastern bank.

   Note

   The present-tense form after he, she or it. It carries the verb's two patterns. Transitively, someone spares a person harm, punishment or death, or spares something they could give. Intransitively, it means holding back or living frugally. Watch for the same spelling as the plural noun: in the farm spares, the word is a noun, and in the farm spares nothing, it is a verb.

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