Definition of "refraining" []

• Present participle of refrain. (verb)

Wiktionary.org : Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License

• "Congress could have reasonably concluded that federal inmates who suffer from a mental illness that causes them to “have serious difficulty in refraining from sexually violent conduct,” would pose an especially high danger to the public if released."
• "The basic idea of the fast, and of fasting in general (at least as I understand it) is to practice self-denial, develop discipline, and exercise an ability of which only humans, of all animals, are capable -- refraining from a desired good."
• "At a different level of development, the interest in avoiding these harms might be much greater relative to the cost of refraining from the behaviors that impose them, and we might say that there is such a duty and right."