Library / English Dictionary

ABSTAIN

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Choose not to consume

Example:

I abstain from alcohol

Synonyms:

abstain; desist; refrain

Classified under:

Verbs of eating and drinking

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "abstain"):

fast (abstain from eating)

fast (abstain from certain foods, as for religious or medical reasons)

avoid; keep off (refrain from certain foods or beverages)

teetotal (practice teetotalism and abstain from the consumption of alcoholic beverages)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s
Somebody ----s PP
Somebody ----s VERB-ing

Antonym:

consume (serve oneself to, or consume regularly)

Derivation:

abstainer (a person who refrains from drinking intoxicating beverages)

abstainer (someone who practices self denial as a spiritual discipline)

abstention; abstinence (the trait of abstaining (especially from alcohol))

abstinent (a person who refrains from drinking intoxicating beverages)

abstinent (self-restraining; not indulging an appetite especially for food or drink)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Refrain from voting

Classified under:

Verbs of political and social activities and events

Hypernyms (to "abstain" is one way to...):

forbear; refrain (resist doing something)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s

Credits

 Context examples: 

Specifies whether the participant had abstained from eating when the specimen is obtained.

(Performed Specimen Collection Fasting Status Indicator, NCI Thesaurus)

I had been accustomed, during the night, to steal a part of their store for my own consumption, but when I found that in doing this I inflicted pain on the cottagers, I abstained and satisfied myself with berries, nuts, and roots which I gathered from a neighbouring wood.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Abstaining from food.

(Fasting, NCI Thesaurus)

It is well for you that a low fever has forced you to abstain for the last three days: there would have been danger in yielding to the cravings of your appetite at first.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Indicates whether a specimen obtained from a subject that has abstained from food and possibly water for the prescribed amount of time; or from a subject who has not abstained from food or water.

(Fasting Status at Specimen Collection, NCI Thesaurus)

I purposely abstain from dates on this occasion, that every one may be at liberty to fix their own, aware that the cure of unconquerable passions, and the transfer of unchanging attachments, must vary much as to time in different people.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

He did not abstain from conversing with me: he even called me as usual each morning to join him at his desk; and I fear the corrupt man within him had a pleasure unimparted to, and unshared by, the pure Christian, in evincing with what skill he could, while acting and speaking apparently just as usual, extract from every deed and every phrase the spirit of interest and approval which had formerly communicated a certain austere charm to his language and manner.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

You should listen to me till you were tired, and advise me till you were still tired more; but it is impossible to put a hundredth part of my great mind on paper, so I will abstain altogether, and leave you to guess what you like.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

They might have said, as I have no doubt they thought, that they had believed me to be without any friends save them: for, indeed, I had often said so; but, with their true natural delicacy, they abstained from comment, except that Diana asked me if I was sure I was well enough to travel.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)