Word.ws English Dictionary

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)

  1. (obsolete, reflexive, transitive) Keep or withhold oneself.
  2. (intransitive) Refrain from (something or doing something); keep from doing, especially an indulgence.
    • In order to improve his health, Rob decided to abstain from smoking.
    1. (intransitive) 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
  3. (intransitive, obsolete) Fast (not eat for a period).
  4. (intransitive) 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.
  5. (obsolete, transitive) 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

  1. absque dubio
  2. absque hoc
  3. absque impetitione vasti
  4. abstain
  5. abstainable
  6. abstained
  7. abstainedst
  8. abstainer
  9. abstainers
  10. abstainest
  11. abstaineth

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.