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say it: SPER-ing
sparing is an adjective meaning "avoiding waste". It is pronounced /ˈspɛɹɪŋ/ — SPER-ing. It carries one recorded sense.
avoiding waste
“an economical meal”
“an economical shopper”
“a frugal farmer”
“a frugal lunch”
“a sparing father and a spending son”
“sparing in their use of heat and light”
“stinting in bestowing gifts”
“thrifty because they remember the great Depression”
“`scotch' is used only informally”
colloquialism
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for sparing come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.