abstemious

adjective

ab·​ste·​mi·​ous ab-ˈstē-mē-əs 

formal

: marked by restraint especially in the eating of food or drinking of alcohol

an abstemious drinker

also : reflecting such restraint

an abstemious diet

abstemiously adverb

abstemiousness noun

Did you know?

Abstemious and abstain look alike, and both have meanings involving self-restraint or self-denial. So they must both come from the same root, right? Yes and no. Both get their start from the Latin prefix abs-, meaning "from" or "away." But abstain traces to the Latin abstinēre, a combination of abs- and the Latin verb tenēre ("to hold"), while abstemious comes from the Latin abstēmius, which combines abs- with tēm- (a stem found in the Latin tēmētum, "intoxicating beverage," and tēmulentus, "drunken") and the adjectival suffix -ius ("full of, abounding in, having, possessing the qualities of").

Synonyms

• ascetic
• ascetical
• abstinent
• temperate

Examples of abstemious in a Sentence

She is known as an abstemious eater and drinker.

being abstemious diners, they avoid restaurants with all-you-can-eat buffets

Recent Examples on the Web

Some have evolved exceedingly specific diets—diets that would put even the most abstemious human to shame. —Scott Travers, Forbes, 12 Mar. 2025

The solution offered up by some: the sort of abstemious, low-fat, often vegetarian, diets that had been prescribed as lust-control regimens only decades earlier. —Rachel Hope Cleves / Made By History, TIME, 14 Feb. 2025

Caroline Schiff, 38, the executive pastry chef at Brooklyn’s Gage & Tollner, says that a decade ago, abstemious diners often asked for sliced fruit in lieu of sugary creations. —Ella Quittner, New York Times, 1 Dec. 2023

For the more abstemious, a bottle of Non3 ($30), a zero-proof sipping drink with notes of cinnamon and yuzu and a slightly tannic finish, alongside a Massimo Lunardon weird-little-dude goblet ($155)—not its official name, but certainly an accurate description of its weird-little-dudeness. —Helen Rosner, The New Yorker, 19 Nov. 2023

Word History

Etymology

borrowed from Latin abstēmius "refraining from wine, careful with one's means," from abs- (variant of ab- ab- before c- and t-) + -tēmius, from a base tēm- "intoxicating" (also in tēmētum "intoxicating beverage," tēmulentus "drunken"); if going back to an Indo-European root *temH-, akin to Sanskrit tāmyati "(he/she) is stunned, loses consciousness, is exhausted," tamayati "(he/she) chokes (someone)," Armenian tʿmrim "(he/she) is stunned" (perhaps going back to *tēmiro-)

First Known Use

1609, in the meaning defined above

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Kids Definition

abstemious

adjective

ab·​ste·​mi·​ous ab-ˈstē-mē-əs 

formal

: not eating and drinking much

abstemiously adverb