s’abstenir
\s‿ap.stə.niʁ\
The verdict
“s’abstenir” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 10
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - S’empêcher de faire quelque chose ; se priver de l’usage de quelque chose.
Corpus desk
Index FR-s-abstenir · s’abstenir · French
s’abstenir · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 10 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "S" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | s’abstenir |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | \s‿ap.stə.niʁ\ |
| Letters | 10 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « s’abstenir » en français
Rare enough to double-check
s’abstenir is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as averb, transcribed \s‿ap.stə.niʁ\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "S’empêcher de faire quelque chose ; se priver de l’usage de quelque chose.".
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for s’abstenir, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable French rules. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is s’abstenir, spelled S-’-A-B-S-T-E-N-I-R.
Definition
- 1S’empêcher de faire quelque chose ; se priver de l’usage de quelque chose.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how s’abstenir appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Cela suffit pour expliquer pourquoi les maîtresses de maison s’abstiennent à Paris de surveiller leur cuisinière au marché, tandis qu’à la Haye elles les accompagnent presque toujours.
[…], et si tu te figures qu'il s’abstient de faire ses farces, à l’Opéra et ailleurs, tu te mets le doigt dans l'œil, mon gars. C'est ton affaire et ça ne me regarde pas.
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.