/æbˈstiːmiəs/
[adjective] Describing someone who eats and drinks only small amounts, or who avoids doing things that feel too pleasurable. An abstemious person practises self-control and does not allow themselves too many luxuries.
Abstemious contains all five vowels in alphabetical order — a, e, i, o, u — making it a favourite puzzle word and a tiny miracle of linguistic symmetry.
The word abstemious reaches back to classical Latin, where it was formed from two elements: the prefix ab-, meaning 'away from' or 'off', and temetum, an old and somewhat obscure Latin noun meaning strong drink, intoxicating liquor, or wine. Temetum itself is thought to be related to the verb temulentus, meaning drunk or intoxicated, which may share an ancient Indo-European root with words connected to darkness or stupor. The full Latin form, abstemius, therefore described someone who kept themselves away from strong drink — a teetotaller in the most ancient sense.
In classical Latin literature, abstemius carried a very specific, almost medical meaning: it referred to a person who abstained from wine, often on the advice of a physician or as a point of personal virtue. The Roman poet Horace used it in this precise sense, and the word sat comfortably within the Roman world's rich moral vocabulary around temperance and self-mastery. Wine was so central to Roman life that choosing to refuse it was considered a notable act of willpower, worth naming with a dedicated word.
The word entered English in the early seventeenth century, during a period when educated writers were enthusiastically borrowing directly from Latin to expand the English vocabulary. It appears in English texts from around 1610 onwards, arriving almost unchanged from its Latin form — Latin abstemius simply became English abstemious, with the standard -ous suffix used to form adjectives. This was part of a broader fashion for so-called 'inkhorn terms', Latin and Greek borrowings that critics sometimes mocked as unnecessarily showy, but which often stuck and flourished.
As abstemious settled into English, its meaning broadened gently. While the Latin original focused specifically on abstaining from alcohol, English writers began to use it for restraint in eating as well, and eventually for any kind of moderate, self-denying behaviour. To call someone abstemious in the eighteenth or nineteenth century was to praise their discipline — it sat alongside words like temperate, frugal, and sober as part of a moral vocabulary celebrating the virtue of not wanting too much. It described not deprivation but choice: the deliberate, dignified refusal of excess.
Today, abstemious is not a word you hear in everyday conversation very often — it belongs to a more formal or literary register. Yet it remains beautifully precise, carrying its original Latin flavour of active self-restraint rather than simple lack of appetite. And of course it carries its famous hidden treasure: the five vowels a, e, i, o, and u appearing in their correct alphabetical order within a single common word, a coincidence that has delighted puzzle-setters and word lovers for generations.