abstainer

From Middle English absteyner, equivalent to abstain +‎ -er.

• (US) IPA^(key): /æbˈsteɪ.nɚ/

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• Rhymes: -eɪnə(ɹ)

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, chapter V, in M. D. Eder, transl., Dream Psychology: Psychoanalysis for Beginners‎, New York: The James A. McCann Company:

     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, chapter 4, in Nineteen Eighty-Four‎:

     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, published 1992, page 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.'

• Nazarite
• teetotaler

• rabatines