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 abstinēre, which combines the prefix ab- (“from, away, off”) with tenēre, a Latin verb meaning “to hold.” Tenēre 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.

Examples

“For more than a hundred and fifty days a year, Ethiopian Orthodox Christians abstain from animal products, in accordance with religious fasting.” — Hannah Goldfield, The New Yorker, 17 July 2020

“The school board Monday voted 5-1, with one abstaining, to approve guidelines for moving classes online that are less restrictive than those established by the state.” — Sarah Kay LeBlanc, The Des Moines (Iowa) Register, 11 Aug. 2020