Dictionary

spareful en · ADJ

Etymology

From spare + -ful?

Meanings

1. (obsolete) Abstemious; Lacking in appetite or vitality.
   • She greeted him with the same kindly smile of twenty years before, with a thinner and more spareful expression, however, such as age takes on. 1912, Missionary Voice- Volume 2, page 692:
   • I admonish them, therefore, to be more spareful in their diet, and so they shall gain health to their bodies, and comfort to their purse. 1845, James Thorne, Rambles by rivers: The Avon, page 61:
   • But how spareful persons he and his predecessors were and how greatly they abstained from all pleasures, even the place where they bare rule did witness, in the which at their departure very few houses were found beside the church ; 1994, Saint Bede (the Venerable), Thomas Stapleton, Historical Works: Ecclesiastical history of the English nation:
2. (obsolete) sparing; chary.
   • A good demand obtains for rosin, only limited by the spareful granting of licences. 1918, The World's Paper Trade Review - Volume 69, page 1074:
   • “If you've got a dog, be spareful of the stuff or he'll leave home,” the youth called after him. 1956, The New Yorker - Volume 32, Part 2, page 101:
   • Lucullus was a niggard of his meat, And spareful of his cups seem'd Anthony; 1845, Torquato Tasso, Godfrey of Bulloigne: Or, The Recovery of Jerusalem, page li:
3. (dated) frugal.
   • The gamesome wind among her tresses plays. And curleth up those growing riches short; Her spareful eye to spread his beams denays, But keeps his shot where Cupid keeps his fort; 1982, John Whenham, Duet and dialogue in the age of Monteverdi - Volume 1, page 31:
   • But Erasmus added, "And yet such as she was, being also spareful and given to profit, he so framed and fashioned her by his dexterity that he lived a sweet and pleasant life with her, and brought her to that case, that she learned to play and sing at the lute and virginals, and every day at his returning home he took a reckoning and account of the task he enjoined her touching the said exercise." 1935, Raymond Wilson Chambers, Thomas More, page 110:

Forms

Relateds

sparefulness

Synonyms

husbandly · frugal · tightwad · spareful · prudent · abstentious · canny · temperate · sober · abstinent · tight · abstemious · spary · provident · economical · chary · parsimonious · huswifely · sparing · spareful · abstemious · abstemious · temperate · moderate · abstinent · parsimonious · thrifty · economic · cheap · close with a buck · penny-pinching