Both Uses of
refrain
in
The House of the Seven Gables
- Phoebe (being of that quickness and activity of temperament that she seldom long refrained from taking a part, and generally a good one, in what was going forward) now felt herself moved to address the stranger.†
Chpt 7 *refrained = avoided or resisted (doing something)
- So craftily had he arranged the circumstances, that, at Clifford's trial, his cousin hardly found it necessary to swear to anything false, but only to withhold the one decisive explanation, by refraining to state what he had himself done and witnessed.†
Chpt 21
Definitions:
-
(1)
(refrain as in: a repeated refrain) something repeated regularlyespecially:
- lines repeated after each verse of a song
- a phrase or idea often repeated by someone or within a poem
-
(2)
(refrain as in: refrain from laughing) avoid or resist doing something