0 present participle of abstain
1 to not do something, especially something enjoyable that you think might be bad:
Although these groups of adolescents were similar in that they abstained from substance use, their reasons for abstaining were unique to each group.
Needless to say, impacts on the legislative result and sanction from the party leadership would differ between voting against and abstaining from the bills.
Of the 479 total speeches, 204 were from senators voting yea and 272 from senators voting nay (with one senator abstaining).
For the younger respondents, such sacrifices frequently involved abstaining from social eating and drinking.
By contrast, when currently abstaining users were also included the correlations with days since last use fell well short of significance.
This is a startlingly high proportion, and the correlations were only marginally weaker when they excluded participants who had used regularly but were now abstaining.
It could be argued that abstentions should also be given a value of zero, since abstaining governments refuse to support a measure.
I calculated the probability of casting a vote for the incumbent party, as opposed to abstaining or voting for his opponent.
