Save

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /seɪv/

Definitions

1. to keep someone or something from harm, danger, loss, or failure
2. To protect or deliver from threat or injury ; to keep or set aside for later use ; to refrain from using or spending unnecessarily
3. To shield or spare from potential damage or loss ; to preserve something for a subsequent time ; to reduce consumption or expenditure

Etymology: Before "save" meant to rescue or keep safe, the English verb was "nerian," a native Old English word meaning roughly to save or to heal, which Middle English speakers eventually replaced with a French import. That import came from Old French "sauver," itself descended from Late Latin "salvāre," "to save," built on the adjective "salvus," meaning "safe, whole, unharmed." The same Latin root gave English "salvation," "salvage," and "salve," so these words are relatives that arrived by different routes. The Latin family tree also explains why the word's core idea is wholeness rather than rescue. Being "salvus" meant being intact, uninjured, in one piece, and the verb extended that sense to making someone or something whole again. Over centuries in English, the sense narrowed and branched into rescuing from danger, keeping money aside, and, in computing, writing data to storage, each still tracing back to that original notion of keeping something whole.

Synonyms: rescue, preserve, conserve, store, set aside

Antonyms: spend, waste, lose, deplete