Word of the Day

: September 13, 2023

abstain

verb ub-STAYN

What It Means

To abstain from something is to choose to not do or have that thing. Abstain can also mean specifically "to choose not to vote."

// The doctor insisted that Drew abstain from eating for at least 12 hours before his blood test.

// Ten members voted for the proposal, six members voted against it, and two abstained.

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abstain in Context

"In this impassioned plea to restore native ecosystems, landscape designer Reynolds (The Garden Awakening) sets out to recruit green 'warriors' to build ARKs, or 'Acts of Restorative Kindness,' on their land. ... Those looking to turn their gardens into ARKs should overcome 'the shame of having a messy garden'; abstain from using fungicides, pesticides, and herbicides; cut back on concrete usage in landscaping so as to 'let the earth breathe as much as possible'; and plant native flora." — Publisher's Weekly, 1 Aug. 2022

Did You Know?

If you abstain, you're consciously, and usually with effort, choosing to hold back from doing something that you would like to do. Lucky for you, we’d never abstain from sharing a good bit of word history. Abstain traces back through Middle English and Anglo-French to the Latin verb abstinēre, which combines the prefix ab- ("from, away, off") with tenēre, a Latin verb meaning "to hold." (Spanish speakers might recognize tenēre’s influence in the Spanish verb tener, meaning "to have, hold, or take.") Tenēre has many offspring in English; other descendants include contain, detain, maintain, obtain, pertain, retain, and sustain, as well as some words that don’t end in -tain, such as tenant and tenacious. Abstain, like many of its cousins, has been used by English speakers since at least the 14th century.