Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of various devices for preventing waste, damage, or loss.
  • noun A receptacle for catching the waste products of a process for further use in manufacture.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A contrivance for saving, or preventing waste or loss; a catch-all.
  • noun A small sail set under another, or between two other sails, to catch or save the wind.
  • noun A trough in a paper-making machine which collects any pulp that may have slopped over the edge of the wire-cloth.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A device in a candlestick to hold the ends of candles, so that they be burned.
  • noun (Naut.) A small sail sometimes set under the foot of another sail, to catch the wind that would pass under it.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Anything that saves fragments, or prevents waste or loss.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a net hung between ship and pier while loading a ship
  • noun a receptacle for catching waste products for further use
  • noun a sail set to catch wind spilled from a larger sail

Etymologies

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Examples

  • To explain every little mark of usury and covetousness, such as the mortgages, bonds, indentures, &c. the piece of candle stuck on a save-all, on the mantle-piece; the rotten furniture of the room, and the miserable contents of the dusty wardrobe, would be unnecessary: we shall only notice the more striking articles.

    The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency John Trusler

  • Epergne, perhaps _épargne_, a save-all or hold-all.

    Notes and Queries, Number 48, September 28, 1850 Various

  • As long as the world was content to take our manufactures as we chose to make them -- when, no other nation having entered the lists with us, we were without competitors, and absolute masters of the commerce of the world, this make-all save-all principle was undoubtedly the most effective.

    Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 53, No. 327, January, 1843 Various

  • She was some miles inshore of us, and as the day brightened we made her out to be a brigantine (an uncommon rig in those days), standing across our bows, with all studding sails set on the starboard side, indeed everything that could pull, including water sails and save-all.

    Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue Various

  • The business of the dairy, like the feeding of hogs and poultry, is originally carried on as a save-all.

    XI. Book I. Of the Rent of Land 1909

  • The hog, that finds his food among ordure, and greedily devours many things rejected by every other useful animal, is, like poultry, originally kept as a save-all.

    XI. Book I. Of the Rent of Land 1909

  • These, as they are fed with what would otherwise be lost, are a mere save-all; and as they cost the farmer scarce any thing, so he can afford to sell them for very little.

    XI. Book I. Of the Rent of Land 1909

  • She was some miles inshore of us, and as the day brightened we made her out to be a brigantine (an uncommon rig in those days), standing across our bows, with all studding sails set on the starboard side, indeed everything that could pull, including water sails and save-all.

    The Capture of a Slaver 1900

  • In reply, however, I assured him that I MUST waste myself willy-nilly, and that the "Review" was only a save-all.

    The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Huxley, Leonard 1900

  • All candles, whatever their material, were carefully used by the economical colonists to the last bit by a little wire frame of pins and rings called a save-all.

    Home Life in Colonial Days Alice Morse Earle 1881

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