Word.ws English Dictionary

in reserve

in reserve prepositional phrase: stored and set aside for possible (future) use; spoken for.

Prepositional phrase

  1. Stored and set aside for possible (future) use; spoken for.
    • Near-synonyms: reserve, reserved, reservedly; held back; spare, backup; up one's sleeve, on ice, saved up, stored up, stored away
    • to hold [something] in reserve

Examples of in reserve in a sentence

  • [something] is held in reserve
  • They still have forces in reserve.
  • In 1915, concurrent with the L.S.W.R. electrification, power was supplied from the Waterloo sub-station, and the old equipment held in reserve.1958 August, T. S. Lascelles, “Diamond Jubilee of the Waterloo & City Railway”, in Railway Magazine, page 523:
  • The Schynige Platte Railway carries on its traffic with no more than four electric locomotives (with one steam locomotive in reserve).1960 December, 'Voyageur', “The Mountain Railways of the Bernese Oberland”, in Trains Illustrated, page 755:

Synonyms of in reserve

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All synonyms of in reserve

Questions about in reserve

What does in reserve mean?
In reserve means stored and set aside for possible (future) use; spoken for.
How do you use in reserve in a sentence?
[something] is held in reserve
What part of speech is in reserve?
In reserve is a prepositional phrase.

Words near in reserve in the dictionary

  1. in regard of
  2. in regard to
  3. in regards to
  4. in relation to
  5. in rem
  6. in reserve
  7. in respect
  8. in respect of
  9. in retreat
  10. in retrospect
  11. in return

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: in reserve (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “in reserve.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/in_reserve. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.