spare
/spɛɚ/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.28 in modern English
7
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
adj
adj
adj
Not plentiful.
adj
Not plentiful.
adj
Not plentiful.
adj
Not plentiful.
Example Sentences
- "I have no spare time."
- "if that no spare cloths he had to give"
- "a spare anchor; a spare wheel or tyre"
- "We could rent out the spare room."
- "Shepard: I take it this is your first time here? Wrex: Meant to tell you Shepard. Earth reminds me of home. Guess you'll be needing a new planet too. That's okay. Tuchanka's got room to spare and a guard dog named Kalros."
- "As the 1857 to Manchester Piccadilly rolls in, I scan the windows and realise there are plenty of spare seats, so I hop aboard. The train is a '221'+'220' combo to allow for social distancing - a luxury on an XC train as normally you're playing sardines, so I make the most of it."
Etymology
From Middle English spare, spar, from Old English spær (“sparing, scant”), from Proto-Germanic *sparaz, from Proto-Indo-European *sph₁rós, from the root *speh₁-. Compare Dutch spaar(zaam), German spar(sam) and spär(lich), Swedish spar(sam), Icelandic sparr (“sparing”); also Latin (pro)sperus (“lucky”), Old Church Slavonic споръ (sporŭ, “plentiful”), Albanian shperr (“earn money”), Persian سپار (sepâr, “entrust; deposit”), Ancient Greek σπαρνός (sparnós, “rare”), Sanskrit स्फिर (sphirá, “thick”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /spɛɚ/
- British English: /spɛə(ɹ)/