How to Use abstemious in a Sentence

abstemious

adjective
  • She is known as an abstemious eater and drinker.
  • The White House started serving liquor again after the abstemious Carter years.
    Lou Cannon, New York Times, 6 Mar. 2016
  • This year’s exercise, which runs from August 17th to 31st, will be a more abstemious affair.
    The Economist, 16 Aug. 2020
  • This was easier in the days when politicians frequently drank at lunch—and some drank a lot—but remains a stock-in-trade even in these abstemious times.
    The Economist, 12 Sep. 2019
  • Denis, who died this week at the age of sixty-seven, was resolutely sober, abstemious, but not at all grave.
    Tobias Wolff, The New Yorker, 28 May 2017
  • What did Rogers, the abstemious beanpole, have to offer as an alternative?
    Gary Thompson, Philly.com, 7 June 2018
  • To the shock and horror of the fiscally abstemious, Trump bragged about his willingness not just to take on large amounts of debt to help build his fortune but also to renege on paying it back in full.
    Reihan Salam, Slate Magazine, 30 Mar. 2017
  • Everyone drank it, constantly, with the exception of the rather abstemious Hitler himself.
    Laura Miller, Slate Magazine, 12 July 2017
  • Rigorous and painful, abstemious and a little hippie-kooky, the Ashram is one of the more curious yet luxurious experiences to be had.
    Sally Singer, Vogue, 13 June 2018
  • In a nation with an abstemious Protestant cultural heritage, self-indulgence—and comfort for its own sake—will always find hackles to raise.
    Amanda Mull, The Atlantic, 8 Dec. 2020
  • Despite rumors of a dalliance with a female gymnastics star, Putin publicly presents himself as upright and abstemious.
    Fox News, 17 Mar. 2018
  • As a result, ladies had to be adept in carrying their gloves while enjoying non-abstemious indoor activities.
    Judith Martin, The Mercury News, 19 Mar. 2017
  • Freddy was an awkward fit in a proud, humorless, abstemious family.
    Anne Diebel, The New York Review of Books, 8 Sep. 2020
  • The most shockingly inexplicable is that of Jack Berman, the studious, abstemious son of Holocaust survivors who fulfills his parents’ dreams by becoming a successful lawyer — and, at age 36, is gunned down by a random madman who hates lawyers.
    Evan Thomas, Washington Post, 25 July 2019
  • Gay, bow-tied, effusive, charismatic, and possessed of a lavish appetite, Beard had the misfortune to live in an era at once bigoted, repressed, paranoid, abstemious, and uninterestingly dressed.
    Aaron Timms, The New Republic, 4 Dec. 2020
  • But Ronaldo and Messi have long followed comparatively abstemious lifestyles.
    Jonathan Clegg, WSJ, 12 June 2018

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'abstemious.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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