What does "refraining" mean?

The act of one who refrains from doing something.

Refraining

Q: What is a synonym for "refraining"?

Common synonyms include: abstainment, abstemiousness, abstention, abstinence, asceticism, avoidance.

noun, verb

noun, verb ·3 syllables ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1
The act of one who refrains from doing something.
"Their refrainings from evil are members of at least one active causal chain[…]"

Verb

1
present participle and gerund of refrain form-of, gerund, participle, present

Synonyms

All synonyms

abstainment abstemiousness abstention abstinence asceticism avoidance

Example

More examples

"Love is a horrible, debilitating disease. Some steps you can take to decrease your risk of contracting love include avoiding contact with other people and refraining from looking at attractive individuals."

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.