abjure

By 1907, when Sargent was 51, he’d had enough: “No more paughtraits,” he wrote in a now-famous note, “I abhor and abjure them and hope never to do another especially of the Upper Classe.”

From Washington Post ● Mar. 5, 2020

People who are otherwise deemed sceptical abjure their reason and believe in miracles.

From The Guardian ● Apr. 10, 2019

Gottlieb tells the story of how James Boswell, the biographer of Samuel Johnson, visited Hume on his deathbed, hoping to find that at the last minute the philosopher would abjure his doubts and embrace Christianity.

From The New Yorker ● Aug. 29, 2016

Press notes indicate some serial business ahead, putting extra pressure on Astral's decision whether to remain mortal and forever abjure the company of fairies, or to get back to where she once belonged.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 8, 2016

His failure on a former occasion had been complete enough, and he had no desire once more to confess himself worsted by Hugh John's determination to abjure all that savoured even remotely of the "dasht-mean."

From The Suprising Adventures of Sir Toady Lion With Those of General Napoleon Smith by S. R. (Samuel Rutherford) Crockett

India abjures formal alliances, which it sees as constraints on its independence.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 1, 2026

As in his Tony-winning revival of “The Color Purple,” he abjures almost all specific signs of setting.

From New York Times ● Oct. 30, 2022

Or, make that drama avoidance; this is a novel that abjures not just plot twists but plot advances.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 10, 2014

He abjures his cow pies for sunblush tomato and goat's cheese baguettes and begins to use a Remington Philishave.

From The Guardian ● Aug. 18, 2012

The persiflage of the French and of fashionable worldlings, which turns into ridicule the exceptions and yet abjures the rules, is like Trinculo's government—its latter end forgets its beginning.

From The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 A Typographic Art Journal by Various

Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman did not immediately say whether he would retry McGhee for the murders, nor whether he would again seek the death penalty, which his predecessor abjured.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 3, 2025

Tunisia's army has historically abjured a political role and Saied has not yet tested the security forces by trying to mobilise them for a major crackdown on dissent.

From Reuters ● Dec. 18, 2022

His three Republican successors did not follow suit, Calvin Coolidge especially abjured such monarchical power.

From Fox News ● Jan. 10, 2019

LBJ might have been a man of elastic morality, but he pretty much kept to his ranch, wrote the required memoir and abjured buck-raking.

From Washington Post ● Jun. 1, 2015

In a sober ceremony, the Mexica abjured their old religion and embraced Christianity.

From "1491" by Charles C. Mann

As for abjuring Eurocentricity, the author himself refers to the “four allies plus China” that received permanent Security Council seats in 1945.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 9, 2026

That did not mean abjuring love as a subject, but rather ennobling it while understanding its limitations.

From New York Times ● Feb. 26, 2018

Later Nate cites an additional, darker reason for abjuring female companionship: “You care a damn about a woman then you keep her as far away from this life as possible.”

From Washington Post ● Apr. 11, 2017

And abjuring graduate school does not mean you must end your romance with literature—in fact the opposite could be true.

From Slate ● Dec. 27, 2012

Hence he crossed over to the Ohio River, and in the State of Mississippi, by five years' residence, and abjuring all other allegiance, became a citizen of the United States.

From Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, Vol. I. by John L. Stephens