English

Noun

abstainer ‎(plural abstainers)

1. Agent noun of abstain; one who abstains; especially, one who abstains from something, such as the use of alcohol or drugs, or one who abstains for religious reasons; one who practices self-denial. [First attested around 1350 to 1470.]^[1]
   • 1920, Sigmund Freud, Dream Psychology: Psychoanalysis for Beginners, translated by M. D. Eder, New York: The James A. McCann Company, Chapter V,

     To one of my very nervous patients, who was an abstainer, whose fancy was fixed on his mother, and who repeatedly dreamed of climbing stairs accompanied by his mother, I once remarked that moderate masturbation would be less harmful to him than enforced abstinence.

   • 1949, George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Chapter 4,

     He was a total abstainer and a nonsmoker, had no recreations except a daily hour in the gymnasium, and had taken a vow of celibacy, believing marriage and the care of a family to be incompatible with a twenty-four-hour-a-day devotion to duty.

   • 1990, William Trevor, "Family Sins" in The Collected Stories, New York: Viking, 1992, p. 1105,

     'Never himself touches a drop of the stuff, you understand. Having been an abstainer since the age of seven or something. A clerky figure even as a child.'

Synonyms

• Nazarite
• teetotaler

Translations

References

1. ↑ Lesley Brown (editor), The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 5th edition (Oxford University Press, 2003 [1933], ISBN 978-0-19-860575-7), page 9