Word Finder - refrained

definition

To hold back, to restrain (someone or something).

definition

To show restraint; to hold oneself back.

definition

To repress (a desire, emotion etc.); to check or curb.

definition

(with preposition "from") To stop oneself from some action or interference; to abstain.

definition

To abstain from (food or drink).

But he wisely refrained from taking the immediate offensive.

As many of the democratic principles frightened her more moderate and experienced advisers, she wisely refrained from immediately putting them into execution.

I was tempted to comment, but refrained and kept my conversation all business.

During his in-and-out-of-it hospital stay both his wife and stepfather had refrained from questioning him.

True to his word, Dean refrained from questioning Jennifer.

The tsar, though he came to know of their existence, refrained from taking repressive measures against them, and when he died suddenly at Taganrog on the 1st of December 1825, two of them made an attempt to realize their political aspirations.

Partly from disappointment and nervous exhaustion, and partly from a conviction that the country required rest in order to judge the practical results of the reforms already accomplished, the tsar refrained from further initiating new legislation, and the government gave it to be understood that the epoch of the great reforms was closed.

In matters of religion she at first tried to hold the balance between the Catholic and Protestant factions and allowed the Presbyterian preachers the practice of their religion so long as they refrained from public preachings in Edinburgh and Leith.

The means whereby he engaged the energies of the Italians on behalf of the French Republic and yet refrained from persecuting the Roman Catholic Church in the way only too common among revolutionary generals, bespoke political insight of no ordinary kind.

Mahmud refrained for the moment from vindicating his right; but, as soon as, through court intrigues, Mansur II.

This council, though condemning the book, refrained from condemning the author, and approved the order of Floris.

Van Buren was not an orator, but... the oft-repeated charge that he refrained from declaring himself on crucial questions is hardly borne out by an examination of his senatorial career.

Dingli had refrained from making any provision in his code as to marrying.

In occupying the town the British general had expressly refrained from pledging Great Britain to remain there; and the government held that any permanent occupation of a post on the mainland carried with it risks of complications out of all proportion to any possible benefit.

In the " Amarna" age the little kings had a certain measure of inde pendence, provided they guarded the royal caravan routes, paid tribute, refrained from conspiracy, and generally supported their suzerain and his agents.

An example of this occurs at the outset in the assertion that Moawiya deliberately refrained from marching to the help of Othman, and indeed that it was with secret joy that he heard of the fatal result of the plot.

For a time, according to his habit, he refrained from speaking; but on the 25th of October he ascended the tribune, and he had not spoken long before the whole Assembly felt that a new power had arisen which might control even the destinies of France.

At the same time William kept her in the background and refrained from appointing her regent during his absence.

The Tao-teh-king, or book of aphorisms on " the Tao and virtue " ascribed to Lao Tsze, is wholly unlike such a composition as Deuteronomy; and the disciples of Confucius carefully refrained from attributing to him any kind of supernatural inspiration in his conversations about social and personal morality.

Van Buren was not an orator, but his more important speeches show careful preparation and his opinions carried weight; and the oft-repeated charge that he refrained from declaring himself on crucial questions is hardly borne out by an examination of his senatorial career.

He publicly expressed his disapproval of the attacks on the Jews in 1878; and the coalition of Liberal parties founded in 1884 was popularly known as the "crown prince's party," but he scrupulously refrained from any act that might embarrass his father's government.

Balmaceda then nominated a ministry not in accord with the views of congress under Senor Claudio Vicuña, whom it was no secret that Balmaceda intended to be his successor in the presidential chair, and, to prevent any expression of opinion upon his conduct in the matter, he refrained from summoning an extraordinary session of the legislature for the discussion of the estimates of revenue and expenditure for 1891.

Even if Anna Pavlovna did not say so, he could see that she wished to and only refrained out of regard for his modesty.

The more judicious of the mechanical or physical school refrained, as a judicious modern physiologist does, from too immediate an application of their principles to daily practice.

He refrained from public preaching, but held conferences in St Mark's with large gatherings of his disciples, and defied the interdict on Christmas Day by publicly celebrating mass and heading a procession through the cloisters.

The Holy See, jealous of the growing power of the house of Luxemburg, attempted to set aside the decrees of the congress of Visegred, by urging Casimir to take up arms against the knights once more; but Casimir prudently refrained from hostilities, and ultimately compensated himself in the southeast for his losses in the north.

The Mahommedans had all this time refrained from attacking the capital as had been expected.

In addressing the German nobility Luther had refrained from taking up theological or religious doctrines; but in September 1520 he attacked the whole sacramental system of the medieval Church in his Babylonish Captivity of the Church.

The Church at first refrained from contesting the rights of the landowners over their own churches, and concentrated her attack upon investiture.

This was the long task essayed by Scholasticism; and, though the great Schoolmen of the 13th century refrained from attempting to rationalize such doctrines as the Trinity and the Incarnation, they were far from considering Theory of them as essentially opposed to reason.

From sheer weariness and disgust the king refrained from any intervention in public affairs for nearly ten years, looking on indifferently while the ever shorter and stormier diets wrangled perpetually over questions of preferment and the best way of dealing with the extreme dissenters, to the utter neglect of public business.

In the constitutional movement in Persia (1907) the Babis, though their sympathies are undoubtedly with the reformers, wisely refrained from outwardly identifying themselves with that party, to whom their open support, by alienating the orthodox mujtahids and mullds, would have proved fatal.

Nicholas received them with some reserve; he refrained from giving them his sanction, and only borrowed from them what they had already borrowed from authentic texts, but in general he took up the same attitude as the forger had ascribed to his remote predecessors.

For some time Abbas Hilmi clung to his idea of liberating himself from all control, and secretly encouraged a nationalist and antiBritish agitation in the native press; but he gradually came to perceive the folly, as well as the danger to himself, of such a course, and accordingly refrained from giving any overt occasion for complaint or protest.

Balmaceda then nominated a ministry not in accord with the views of congress under Senor Claudio Vicuña, whom it was no secret that Balmaceda intended to be his successor in the presidential chair, and, to prevent any expression of opinion upon his conduct in the matter, he refrained from summoning an extraordinary session of the legislature for the discussion of the estimates of revenue and expenditure for 1891.

He carefully refrained from incurring suspicion and unpopularity by opposing the general outcry, and though he saw through the imposture from the beginning he made no attempt to moderate the popular frenzy or to save the life of any of the victims, his co-religionists, not even intervening in the case of Lord Stafford, and allowing Titus Oates to be lodged at Whitehall with a pension.

Encouraged by their success, he devoted himself diligently to this kind of composition, but refrained for a long time from either publicly reciting or publishing his verses.

During the Indian Mutiny Dost Mahommed punctiliously refrained from assisting the insurgents.

It is characteristic of their native policy that they had not only refrained from aiding Vijayanagar in 1565, but had even been willing to despoil their Hindu allies.

But the new system was to apply only to those who, in return for the greater privileges which it was alleged to ensure, would agree to a resurvey of their lands, arrange to pay quit-rents and provide for the permanent support of the government, and as Governor Lawrie found the colonists generally unwilling to make the exchange on the proposed terms, he discreetly refrained from any attempt to put the Fundamental Constitutions in operation and thereby avoided the confusion which must have resulted from two sets of laws.

Drury lost his only daughter, and in 1611 Donne published an extravagant elegy on her, entitled An Anatomy of the World, to which he added in 1612 a Progress of the Soul on the same subject; he threatened to celebrate the "blessed Maid," Elizabeth Drury, in a fresh elegy on each anniversary of her death, but he happily refrained from the third occasion onwards.

At the same time, as prime minister of a British colony, it was strongly felt by loyal colonists that he should at least have refrained from openly interfering between the Transvaal and the imperial government during the course of most difficult negotiations.

After this year the flow of immigrants steadily increased, about 1400 arriving in 1844, and 3000 in 1845.1 Signs of hostility to the Hudson's Bay Company now began to appear among the American population, and in 1845 the provisional government sought to extend its jurisdiction north of the Columbia river, where the Americans had hitherto refrained from settling.

The Old Catholic separation followed, but Acton did not personally join the seceders, and the authorities prudently refrained from forcing the hands of so competent and influential an English layman.

Though he backed his demands by armed demonstrationtwice calling out his friends and retainers to support his policyhe carefully refrained for five long years from actual violence.

Absorbed in the work of the foreign office, which at this time was abnormally active, he refrained from pressing home the arguments for internal reform.

If he refrained from actual invective, he accomplished his purpose, according to Guizot, by "omission, palliation and dissimulation."

With passive courage Louis refrained from making any promise to the insurgents.

The old courtier Maurepas, jealous of Turgot and desirous of remaining a minister himself, refrained from defending his colleague; and when Turgot, who never knew how to give in, spoke of establishing assemblies of freeholders in the communes and the provinces, in order to relax the tension of over-centralization, Louis XVI., who never dared to pass from sentiment to action, sacrificed his minister to the rancour of the queen, as he had already sacrificed Malesherbes (1776).

Their party was not well disciplined, they purposely refrained from making Th it so, and hence their ruin.