Other forms: saved, saving, saves
To save someone is to get them out of danger. A lifeguard saves a swimmer caught in a current, a neighbour saves a family from a burning flat, a surgeon saves a life on a Tuesday afternoon.
The other big sense is keeping: you save money instead of spending it, save the last biscuit for later, save a seat for a friend. You save time, water and effort by using less of them. On a computer you save your work, and losing an hour of writing because you forgot is a rite of passage. In football the goalkeeper saves the shot, and the stop itself is a save. There is also a bookish save that means except — 'the house was empty save for a chair' — which lives in old novels and contracts, not in conversation.
1verbrescueTo bring someone or something out of danger or harm.~25%
“The lifeboat crew saved four people from the sinking yacht.”
synonyms: rescue
2verbmoneyTo keep money rather than spend it.~12%
“They saved for three years to buy the flat.”
3verbuseTo use less of something than you otherwise would.~12%
“Taking the back road saves twenty minutes.”
4verblaterTo keep something so that it can be used later.~2%
“I saved you a slice of the cake.”
5verbstoreTo store work or data on a computer.~19%
“Save the file before you close the laptop.”
6verbballTo stop the ball from going into the goal.~6%
“The keeper saved the penalty with her foot.”
7noungoalkeeperA stop made by a goalkeeper.~18%
“It was a brilliant save in the last minute of the match.”
8prepositionexceptExcept for. Formal and literary.~6%
“The room was empty save for a chair in the corner.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 16 sentences found in the wild and placed 16 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Also accepted in games: rescue
English borrowed save from Old French sauver, which had it from Latin salvō, 'to save'. It arrived with the Normans and pushed aside the native Old English verb nerian, which had carried the meaning before 1066 and did not survive the competition. Behind the Latin sits the Proto-Indo-European root *solh₂-.
Proto-Indo-European
*solh₂-
Middle English
saven
English, today
save
From Middle English saven. From Middle English saven, sauven, a borrowing from Old French sauver, from Latin salvo (“to save”). Displaced native Old English nerian.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA