abstemious
abs·te·mi·ous/æbˈsti.mi.əs/adjective
abstemious is spelled A-B-S-T-E-M-I-O-U-S, 4 syllables: abs·te·mi·ous. The wrong spelling people search most is abstenious: about 20 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 32 of all searches for the word. Abstemious is an adjective meaning “Refraining from freely consuming food or strong drink; sparing in diet; abstinent, temperate”.
How many letters and syllables are in abstemious?
| Letters | 10: A-B-S-T-E-M-I-O-U-S |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 4: abs·te·mi·ous |
| In writing | about once in every 18 million words; the 128,787th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, abstenious, about 20 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).
How do you spell abstemious?
Abstemious is spelled A-B-S-T-E-M-I-O-U-S. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 33 of the searches for abstemious in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is abstemious?
Abstemious appears about once in every 18 million words in written English, the 128,787th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce abstemious?
- UK /æbˈstiː.mɪ.əs/
- US /æbˈsti.mi.əs/
- US /əb-/
Abstemious has 4 syllables, split abs·te·mi·ous in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-abstemious.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of abstemious
- more abstemious comparative
- most abstemious superlative
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does abstemious mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
adjective
- 1
Refraining from freely consuming food or strong drink; sparing in diet; abstinent, temperate.
- 2
Sparing in the indulgence of the appetite or passions.
- 3
Sparingly used; used with temperance or moderation.
- 4
Marked by, or spent in, abstinence.
an abstemious life
- 5
rarePromotive of abstemiousness.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Abstemious in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense refraining from freely consuming food or strong drink:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| German | enthaltsam |
| Spanish | abstemio, sobrio |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does abstemious come from?
From Latin abstēmius (“abstaining from wine”); from ab, abs (“from”) + tēmus, a root of tēmētum (“intoxicating drink, especially strong mead or wine”) (possibly from Proto-Indo-European *temH- (“dark (referring to the colour of wine)”)) + -ous.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).