English

Alternative forms

• teetotalling (British)

Adjective

teetotaling ‎(not comparable)

1. (US) Abstaining from alcohol.
   • 1958: Vance Nye Bourjaily, The Violated: A Novel

     Most were some variation of the girl-whistling, boyish, movie kind, but a few were serious, teetotalling and religious.

   • 1988: Arnold M. Ludwig, Understanding the Alcoholic's Mind: Refocusing the Past

     Their teetotalling, absolutist frame of mind, along with its associated attitudes, simply closed off the option to drink.

   • 1976: Sheldon M. Novick, The Electric War: The Fight Over Nuclear Power

     Insull was English, from an earnest, teetotalling family of modest means. He had learned shorthand and was advancing nicely in a London firm of auctioneers ...

   • 2007 August 15, The New York Times, “Off the Menu”, in New York Times:

     The name of this spacious restaurant and lounge is an ironic reference [to] the teetotaling Andrew J. Volstead, the Minnesota congressman who sponsored the act enforcing Prohibition in 1919.