The trait of abstaining (especially from alcohol)

Usage examples of abstention.

His refusal to partake of any of the dishes that made up the second course did draw comment from his mama, but as she ascribed his loss of appetite to a surfeit of sugarplums, he could only be sorry that she had noticed his abstention.

However, this only served to underscore the divisions on the Council because it passed with five abstentions, including France, Russia, and China.

Clara sat back with bated breath, mentally taking the leap into the abyss, realizing it, and the cold prudence of abstention, and the delirium of the confession.

Why should we try to make it appear that abstention from lying is a virtue?

When I wrote an article some months ago urging temporary abstention from food as a remedy for an inactive appetite and for disease, I was accused of jesting, but I was in earnest.

I attributed much of my freedom from the diseases to which others succumbed to abstention from water drinking.

I shivered from cold, from frustration, from hunger - the sugar high of pastries is woefully short-lived - and from the fact that my vow of abstention had utterly collapsed.

J'ai vecu, as I apprehend most of us manage to exist, missing all along the varied forms of destruction by a hair's-breadth, saving my body, that's clear, and perhaps my soul also, but not without some damage here and there to the fine edge of my conscience, that heirloom of the ages, of the race, of the group, of the family, colourable and plastic, fashioned by the words, the looks, the acts, and even by the silences and abstentions surrounding one's childhood.

They had deliberately forced the N'Taians' abstention by disallowing her suicide.

But after Don Guillermo I felt a feeling of shame and distaste, and with the coming of the drunkards and the worthless ones into the lines, and the abstention of those who left the lines as a protest after Don Guillermo, I wished that I might disassociate myself altogether from the lines, and I walked away, across the square, and sat down on a bench under one of the big trees that gave shade there.

Knowing my habit of abstention, and being of a somewhat malicious and tormenting humor, Captain Dwale had expressly commanded my presence at the feast.

A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.

All of the exotic polities were unanimously in favor, while the Human Polity was split along party lines with a handful of conscientious abstentions.

As to this abstention during certain times of the month, well, in my country it's called the rhythm method, and the Pope has approved it.

He was an occasional social drinker, the first stage above complete abstention.