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e, or release, as from some obligation, debt, or responsibility, or from the consequences of guilt or such ties as it would be sin or guilt to violate; to pronounce free; as, to absolve a subject from his allegiance; to absolve an offender, which amounts to an acquittal and remission of his punishment. Halifax was abso…

To suck up; to drink in; to imbibe; as a sponge or as the lacteals of the body. Bacon.

The state or quality of being absorbable. Graham (Chemistry).

Capable of being absorbed or swallowed up. Kerr.

Anything which absorbs. The ocean, itself a bad absorbent of heat. Darwin.

The act or process of absorbing or sucking in anything, or of being absorbed and made to disappear; as, the absorption of bodies in a whirlpool, the absorption of a smaller tribe into a larger.

The quality of being absorptive; absorptive power.

To take one's self off; to decamp. [A jocular word. U. S.]

. Etym: [L., without this.] (Law) The technical words of denial used in traversing what has been alleged, and is repeated.

To hold one's self aloof; to forbear or refrain voluntarily, and especially from an indulgence of the passions or appetites; -- with from. Not a few abstained from voting. Macaulay. Who abstains from meat that is not gaunt Shak.

One who abstains; esp., one who abstains from the use of intoxicating liquors.

Sparing in diet; refraining from a free use of food and strong drinks; temperate; abstinent; sparing in the indulgence of the appetite or passions. Instances of longevity are chiefly among the abstemious. Arbuthnot.

The quality of being abstemious, temperate, or sparing in the use of food and strong drinks. It expresses a greater degree of abstinence than temperance.

The act of abstaining; a holding aloof. Jer. Taylor.

Act of wiping clean; a cleansing; a purging. The task of ablution and abstersion being performed. Sir W. Scott.

Something cleansing. The strong abstersive of some heroic magistrate. Milton.

The quality of being abstersive. Fuller.

The act or practice of abstaining; voluntary forbearance of any action, especially the refraining from an indulgence of appetite, or from customary gratifications of animal or sensual propensities. Specifically, the practice of abstaining from intoxicating beverages, -- called also total abstinence. The abstinence from…

Refraining from indulgence, especially from the indulgence of appetite; abstemious; continent; temperate. Beau. & Fl.

Expressing a particular property of an object viewed apart from the other properties which constitute it; -- opposed to Ant: concrete; as, honesty is an abstract word. J. S. Mill.