Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Eating and drinking in moderation.
- adj. Characterized by abstinence or moderation: The hermit led an abstemious way of life.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Sparing in diet; moderate in the use of food and drink; temperate; abstinent.
- Restricted; very moderate and plain; very sparing; spare: opposed to luxurious or rich: as, an abstemious diet.
- Devoted to or spent in abstemiousness or abstinence: as, an abstemious life.
- Promoting or favoring abstemiousness; associated with temperance.
Wiktionary
- adj. Marked by, or spent in, abstinence; as, an abstemious life.
- adj. rare Promotive of abstemiousness.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Orig. Latin sense. Abstaining from wine.
- adj. Sparing in diet; refraining from a free use of food and strong drinks; temperate; abstinent; sparing in the indulgence of the appetite or passions.
- adj. Sparingly used; used with temperance or moderation.
- adj. Marked by, or spent in, abstinence.
- adj. rare Promotive of abstemiousness.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. sparing in consumption of especially food and drink
- adj. marked by temperance in indulgence
Etymologies
- First attested in 1600. From Latin abstēmius ("abstaining from wine"); from ab, abs ("from") + tēmus, root of tēmētum ("intoxicating drink, mead, wine"), akin to German dämlich ("stupid, silly"), Old Norse thām ("mugginess"), Old Irish tām ("death"), Sanskrit tāmyati ("he becomes stunned, exhausted"). (Wiktionary)
- From Latin abstēmius : abs-, ab-, away; see ab-1 + *tēmum, liquor, variant of tēmētum. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Dowd has repeatedly mocked Obama's "abstemious" tastes and how these set him apart from the great, fat, American mainstream:”
“Dowd has repeatedly mocked Obama's "abstemious" tastes and how these set him apart from the great, fat, American mains ...”
“The second one, "abstemious" I more or less gleaned, also from context, but also because it's close to "abstain", which is near to what it means.”
“No one need go far in search of proofs that this kind of abstemious living is not merely possible, but far less hurtful to health than excess.”
The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories [a machine-readable transcription]
“He insists it was an "abstemious" occasion, but warm beer was put in a bucket of ice and then Dr Calder knocked the bucket and one of the corks shot out and hit him in the eye, blinding it.”
“Breakfast wasn't "eaten" it was "got across your chest", a fried culinary flak jacket of bacon, fried eggs, toast with butter, slices of black pudding, an abstemious blob of HP Sauce.”
“In Ms. Cappello's book, Jackson comes across as a complete, complex individual: In addition to being an innovative physician, he was an amateur painter, a nonsmoking teetotaler,and an abstemious eater whose sandwiches included exactly one lettuce leaf.”
“All drank except Lee Goom, the abstemious cabin boy.”
“For Liebling, "Hitler was the archetype of the abstemious man.”
The Wall Street Journal: A.J. Liebling's Favorite Rosé, Perfect for Summer
“Surprisingly abstemious in a scene rife with temptation, she and her lover Robert Mapplethorpe traded hunger and privation for their places in the pantheon of art.”
The Guardian: Readers recommend their favourite books of 2010
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘abstemious’.
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1100
abound, technology, branch of knowled..., prognosticate, automaton, matron, an older married ..., realm, special field of ..., kingdom, annals, historical records and 981 more...
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important
shamanism, consol, sanguine, iffy, affinity, concatenation, honed, innumberable, aiden, inexorable, vet, suss and 176 more...
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Test Prep or Just for fun
Building a list for standardized test prep or just for learning some new words! Please add any words that you feel are important for the SAT/GRE/GMAT etc...
throng, morass, parley, facile, kismet, strife, jetsam, carrion, annex, harbinger, vestige, surreptitious and 575 more...
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GRE Barron's 800
abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abject, abjure, abscission, abscond, abstemious, abstinence, abysmal, accretion and 787 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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GRE 2014
abate, abdicate, abase, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2053 more...
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Philosophic , etymology
every major discipline has uniquely developed esoteric nomenclature to facilitate interdisciplinary dissemination
quale , qualia, elegy, tacet, lexicon, annunciate, caste, eros, contrive, purlicue, irony, venacular, dilapidate and 569 more...
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EN - high brow
abrogate, abstemious, abstract of law, alderman, apocryphal, apostasy, apoplexy, apotheosis, apposite, aver, decorous, apprehensive and 51 more...
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Remember Not To Forget
Sephardic, Umwelt, amphiboly, untrammeled, sequela, pandiculation, tensegrity, syncretism, pugilism, shemagh, disquisition, perspicacity and 65 more...
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Specificity
Words that have with subtly different meanings from other words.
vestibule, commoditize, commodify, monetize, corroborate, mezzanine, apposite, irony, calefacient, maxim, pandiculate, rarefaction and 40 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
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gre2
aberrant, aberration, aboveboard, abrasive, abstemious, acme, admonish, affable, affluent, alacrity, allegory, alleviate and 1901 more...
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Barron's 1100 words you need to know ...
abstemious, derogatory, disparate, edifice, extant, indict, levity, lugubrious, maudlin, nebulous, omnivorous, pesky and 8 more...
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What Do You Mean ?
U Gotta Know These.......
falter, ruddy, flounder, pallid, fumble, founder, labile, titular, tacit, pragmatic, fatalism, jaded and 112 more...
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GRE Words
abjure, unswear, state, rescission, indemnification, ab, reny, abnegate, vitiated, vitiate, adumbrated, abash and 378 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for abstemious.
kingparton He was upright, singularly abstemious, studious; but he was poor, he was the son of a small farmer, and she was of the gentry.
Lucia Gilbert Runkle, "Abigail Adams" Nov 12, 2011