sparest

1. 1
   adjective

   Superlative of spare.

   Even the sparest hotel room felt luxurious after weeks of camping.

   Critics praised the novel's sparest passages, where every word earned its place.

   Note

   A spelling shared by two different words: spare plus -est, with the silent e absorbed. As an adjective it grades the meanings of spare that come in degrees, such as scant, austere and frugal, so the sparest prose is the leanest of its kind. The reserve meanings resist it, since a spare key is not more or less spare. Keep it apart from the archaic verb form, as in thou sparest.

2. 2
   verbarchaic

   Second-person singular simple present indicative of spare.

   Note

   The verb ending that belongs with thou, the old singular you: thou sparest where modern English says you spare. It carries every sense of the verb, from showing mercy to holding something back or living frugally. Use it only where the voice is deliberately old. It is spelled exactly like the superlative adjective, and the pronoun thou is what tells them apart.

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