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Definition
a temporary stop or suspension- His mind floated in abeyance, coming back always to that horrible bottle.Sinclair Lewis -- Babbitt
- I'm giving you time, And until morning I'll hold in abeyance The execution of this conveyance.Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere -- Tartuffe
- Not until then, still numbed and with his powers of reason almost in abeyance, did he remember his camera.Arthur C. Clarke -- Childhood's End
- That was the great and the terrible moment which for long had been in abeyance.Zane Grey -- The Man of the Forest
- But in a very short time, all these efforts at communal legislation fell into abeyance.Victor Hugo -- The Hunchback of Notre Dame
- Sometimes I wasn't sure whether she could add the next word, her throat kept so many other sounds back, in abeyance.Saul Bellow -- The Adventures of Augie March
- Under such circumstances Mr. Raffles's pleasure in annoying his company was kept in abeyance.George Eliot -- Middlemarch
- Tom's severity gave her a certain fund of defiance, and kept her sense of error in abeyance.George Eliot -- The Mill on the Floss
- You have put many things in abeyance to win a war.Ernest Hemingway -- For Whom the Bell Tolls
- Even Old Jacob had to admit that divine displeasure was in abeyance for the time being.John Wyndham -- The Chrysalids
- The beginning of November found its date still in abeyance, though he asked her at the most tempting times.Thomas Hardy -- Tess of the d'Urbervilles
- She asked herself when it would begin, like fire-works, or Lent, or the opera season; not that she cared much, but she wondered what kept it in abeyance.Henry James -- The Portrait of a Lady - Volumes 1 & 2
- The animacy of life hung in abeyance.Thomas Wolfe -- Look Homeward, Angel
- With loneliness in abeyance and with my creative juices in full flow, I could not have been happier ....William Styron -- Sophie's Choice
- Let's hold this story about the defecting boomer in abeyance for the moment, shall we?"Tom Clancy -- The Hunt for Red October
- Logic said the traitor was Yueh, but he held final decision in abeyance.Frank Herbert -- Dune
- Thoughts and emotions relative to the meeting with Tom Doan were held in abeyance.Zane Grey -- The Thundering Herd
- While these affairs were in abeyance, our visit to Mr. Boythorn's was postponed.Charles Dickens -- Bleak House
- She asked herself when it would begin, like fire-works, or Lent, or the opera season; not that she cared much, but she wondered what kept it in abeyance.Henry James -- The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2
- Just at present the sense of humor is in abeyance.George Bernard Shaw -- Man And Superman