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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.
Synonyms
Examples of abstain in a Sentence
Margaux Lushing, Forbes, 5 Nov. 2024
For some people, this will mean choosing to vote for one of the candidates instead of abstaining.
—Michael Bruter and Sarah Harrison, TIME, 31 Oct. 2024
Fasting is an eating plan that involves limiting or abstaining from food or sometimes drinking.1 Intermittent fasting, which involves cycling between periods of eating and fasting, has recently grown in popularity.
—Cristina Mutchler, Verywell Health, 11 Oct. 2024
Only five, including Germany and Hungary, voted against, while 12 abstained, including Spain and Sweden.
—Eleanor Pringle, Fortune Europe, 4 Oct. 2024
See all Example Sentences for abstain 
Dictionary Entries Near abstain
Cite this Entry
“Abstain.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/abstain. Accessed 28 Nov. 2024.
Copy CitationKids Definition
abstain
verb
Medical Definition
abstain
intransitive verb
Legal Definition
abstain
intransitive verb
Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U.S. 557 (2006)
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