The Word of the Day for October 27 is :
abstemious � \ab-STEE-mee-uss\ �adjective
:marked by restraint especially in the consumption of food or alcohol; also :reflecting such restraint
Example sentence :
My 100-year-old aunt attributes her longevity to her abstemious habits.
Did you know?
"Abstemious" and "abstain" look alike, and both have meanings involving self-restraint or self-denial. So they must both come from the same source, right? Well, that's partly true. Both get their start from the Latin prefix "abs-," meaning "from" or "away," but "abstain" traces to "abs-" plus the Latin verb "ten?re" (meaning "to hold"), while "abstemious" gets its "-temious" from a suffix akin to the Latin noun "temetum," meaning "intoxicating drink." (It makes sense, therefore, that abstemious behavior usually involves staying away from intoxicating drinks.) "Abstain" is the older word, first appearing in the 14th century; "abstemious" didn't turn up in print in English until 1609.

