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# The BFD Word of the Day
- URL: https://goodoil.news/the-bfd-word-of-the-day-311/
- Published: 2020-12-01T17:15:00.000Z
- Updated: 2020-12-01T06:15:52.000Z
- Author: Peter Andersen
- Tags: General, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2024-07-17 02:38

The word for today is…

abstain (verb) – 1\. To keep oneself from doing, engaging in, or partaking of something; refrain.

1. To refrain from voting.

Source : [The Free Dictionary](https://www.thefreedictionary.com/abstain?ref=goodoil.news)

Etymology : If you abstain, you’re consciously, and usually with effort, choosing to hold back from doing something that you would like to do. One may abstain from a vice, for example, or in parliamentary procedure, one might abstain from placing a vote. So it’s no surprise that abstain traces back through Middle English and Anglo-French to the Latin abstin?re, which combines the prefix ab- (“from, away, off”) with ten?re, a Latin verb meaning “to hold.” Ten?re has many offspring in English—other descendants include contain, detain, maintain, obtain, pertain, retain, and sustain, as well as some words that don’t end in -tain, such as tenacious. Abstain, like many of its cousins, has been used by English speakers since at least the 14th century.

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