ppl. a.
1. Of time, life: Passed profitably and virtuously.
1534. More, Dial. Comfort, III. xvii. (1553), Q. viii b. The well spent time.
1662. G. Wharton, Cal. Carol., Feb. B 5 b. Who … laid down Their well spent Lives for Charles’s Injur’d Crown.
1711. Pope, Temp. Fame, 330. The coustant tenour of whose well-spent days No less deserv’d a just return of praise.
1780. Mirror, No. 90. An old man, looking back on a well-spent life.
1848. Thackeray, Van. Fair, lii. She beats all the women I have ever seen in the course of all my well-spent life.
2. Expended judiciously or to advantage.
1749. B. Franklin, Poor Richard (1890), 188. ’T is a well spent penny that saves a groat.
