abstained
abstained is the simple past and past participle of abstain.
Meaning of abstain
Verb
abstain (third-person singular simple present abstains, present participle abstaining, simple past and past participle abstained)
- Keep or withhold oneself.
- Refrain from (something or doing something); keep from doing, especially an indulgence.
- In order to improve his health, Rob decided to abstain from smoking.
- To refrain from drinking alcohol.
- … she had made Bunting abstain very early in their acquaintance. … Glad she was now that he had taken the pledge as a younger man; but for that nothing would have kept him from the drink during the bad times they had gone through.1913, Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes, The Lodger
- Fast (not eat for a period).
- Deliberately refrain from casting one's vote at a meeting where one is present.
- I abstain from this vote, as I have no particular preference.
- Hinder; keep back; withhold.
- Whether he abstain men from marying [sic].1645, John Milton, Tetrachordon: Expositions on the four chief places in Scripture
Questions about abstained
- What is abstained the simple past and past participle of?
- Abstained is the simple past and past participle of abstain.
Words near abstained in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: abstained (page history and authors); abstain (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “abstained.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/abstained. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
