save with a give and a sneer

I have no idea. Where did you come across this expression?

Apparently it is mistyped and also unhelpfully extracted from its sentence context. The correct version is apparently:

"He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer."

I.e. "save" means "except".

The only place I heard that was in a Sherlock Holmes story called: A Scandal In Bohemia. It says, "He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and sneer."

It is obviously from Sherlock Holmes PartI :

ADVENTURE 1: “A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA”

"... All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passio