The word for today is…

abstain (verb) – 1. To keep oneself from doing, engaging in, or partaking of something; refrain.

  1. To refrain from voting.

Source : The Free Dictionary

Etymology : If you abstain, you’re consciously, and usually with effort, choosing to hold back from doing something that you would like to do. One may abstain from a vice, for example, or in parliamentary procedure, one might abstain from placing a vote. So it’s no surprise that abstain traces back through Middle English and Anglo-French to the Latin abstin?re, which combines the prefix ab- (“from, away, off”) with ten?re, a Latin verb meaning “to hold.” Ten?re has many offspring in English—other descendants include contain, detain, maintain, obtain, pertain, retain, and sustain, as well as some words that don’t end in -tain, such as tenacious. Abstain, like many of its cousins, has been used by English speakers since at least the 14th century.

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Peter is a fourth-generation New Zealander, with his mother's and father's folks having arrived in New Zealand in the 1870s. He lives in Lower Hutt with his wife, some cats and assorted computers. His...