Abstain from certain foods, as for religious or medical reasons

Usage examples of fasting.

Our Lord so practised secrecy Himself in His fasting, in His praying, and in His almsgiving, and He makes so much of that same secrecy in all His teaching, as almost to make the essence of all true religion to stand in its secrecy.

The Muslim operates under a legalistic system embracing five essentials: the creed, prayers, almsgiving, fasting and the pilgrimage to Mecca.

These plausible explanations were not without their effect, and when Grimbart went on to declare that, ever since Nobel proclaimed a general truce and amnesty among all the animals of the forest, Reynard had turned hermit and spent all his time in fasting, almsgiving, and prayer, the complaint was about to be dismissed.

What with my still undiagnosed autoimmune disease and all the fasting and the death wish and so forth, my body kept breaking down and requiring surgery for one thing or another.

At the turning of the katun, the time comes for fasting and drinking balche, for cleansing the sacred books, for dancing on stilts and burning incense.

Whereas when our own beloved country, once, by the blessing of God, united, prosperous, and happy, is now afflicted with faction and civil war, it is peculiarly fit for us to recognize the hand of God in this terrible visitation, and in sorrowful remembrance of our own faults and crimes as a nation and as individuals to humble ourselves before Him and to pray for His mercy-to pray that we may be spared further punishment, though most justly deserved, that our arms may be blessed and made effectual for the re-establishment of order, law, and peace throughout the wide extent of our country, and that the inestimable boon of civil and religious liberty, earned under His guidance and blessing by the labors and sufferings of our fathers, may be restored in all its original excellence Therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do appoint the last Thursday in September next as a day of humiliation, prayer, and fasting for all the people of the nation.

Dietary glycemic load assessed by food-frequency questionnaire in relation to plasma high-density-lipoprotein cholesterol and fasting plasma triacylglycerols in postmenopausal women.

Besides the attention it paid to Protestants it instituted very severe processes against Judaizing Christians and took cognizance also of seduction, of pimping, of sodomy, and of infringment of the ecclesiastical rules for fasting.

Massage of the gums may prove helpful, if gently applied, though in a serious case of pyorrhea a fasting and general blood-purifying regimen is advisable.

Similar to Sukkoth, shelters would be constructed from plants, replete with furniture, followed by fasting, then feast and food offerings to Demeter.

Venice during Carnevale, after Shyla died, when I had been covering the revelry of Venetians before the long fastings and privations of Lent During the wildest part of that first night, I had marveled that these people who were celebrating the pleasures of the flesh with such open-ended immoderation could turn so quickly to the darker joys of self-denial.

The cleanness and the fasting of us freres Maketh that Christ accepteth our prayeres.

Ernest found a little journal, brief in its records indeed, but we learn from it that on all those wedding and birthdays, when I fancied his austere religion made him hold aloof from our merry-making, he was spending the time in fasting and praying for us and for our children!

Will every week, ere that the cock him croweth, Fasting, y-drinken of this well a draught, As thilke holy Jew our elders taught, His beastes and his store shall multiply.

Truly the gravity of his demeanour exceeded that which is attained by Sheiks and Dervishes after much drinking of the waters of wisdom, and fasting, and abnegation of the pleasures that betray us to folly in this world!