avoid

Thesaurus: synonyms, antonyms, and examples

to prevent something from happening
preventVaccination will prevent the spread of the disease.
avoidLabel the boxes to avoid confusion.
stopThis should stop any further trouble.
avertWe had to act quickly to avert disaster.
prohibitBehavioural problems in the classroom prohibit learning.
checkChildren are being vaccinated in an attempt to check the spread of the disease.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Preventing and impeding
anti-drug
anti-jamming
avoid
avoidable
avoidably
flameproof
frustration
guard against something
hamper
hang
have someone/something hanging round your neckidiom
preclude
preclusion
preclusive
prejudice
prevent
scuttle
smother
stifle
suffocate

avertverb[T] (TURN)

to turn away your eyes or thoughts: 转移（目光、想法等）;把…转（向别处）
I averted my gaze/eyes while he dressed.他穿衣服的时候我把目光转向一边。
We tried to avert our thoughts from our massive financial problems.我们尽量不去想我们面临的严重财政问题。

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Using the eyes
accommodate
accommodation
all eyes are on someone/somethingidiom
astigmatic
beholder
cast
corner
discern
fix
glare
penetrating
perceive
re-see
re-sight
rest on someone/something
resurvey
rubbernecking
sighting
spot
tab

avert | American Dictionary

avert
verb[ T ]
us/əˈvɜrt/

avertverb[T] (PREVENT)

to prevent something bad from happening; avoid:
The last-minute agreement averted renewed fighting.

avertverb[T] (TURN AWAY)

to turn away your eyes or thoughts:
The shy man was standing before me, his eyes averted.

avert | Business English

avert
verb[ T ]
uk /əˈvɜːt/us
to prevent something bad from happening:
avert a crisis/disasterHe argued that the way to avert an economic crisis is for individuals to follow their usual spending habits.
avert industrial action/a strikeBy law, the president may appoint a board to avert a strike that could result in widespread interruption of U.S. rail service.

Examples of avert

avert
A source of variation among studies estimating the proportion of potentially avoidable arthroscopies is the criteria used to consider that the procedure would be averted.
In the results section, the authors estimate the number of cases of childhood morbidity that could be averted in each pollution clean-up scenario.
The panoptic state had no intention of averting its gaze once it reached the threshold of the family home.
Still, a modest expansion of day-care provision was projected to allow women to work, thus averting the feared shortage of labour in the industrial sector.
He averted syncope by tensing the muscle of his arms and legs or bending forwards as if to tie his shoelaces.
Usually, though, this relationship averts the greater harm of the child's lacking all parental relations.
During the dialectical analysis certain constrains are imposed for averting different kinds of fallacious argumentation.
What forces and policies made it possible for potential instability to be averted at both domestic and inter national levels?
The control children showed a gaze facilitation effect in that they were better able to detect faces with direct gaze than averted gaze.
1219 therapy necessarily ends abruptly, with some sense of uncertainty about having averted an impending catastrophe.
In contrast, such a life would encourage risk taking with respect to averting losses.
Mentors must also be on guard against giving too much advice, in addition to averting biases, harassment, and conflicts of interest.
The novel combination of averting behavior and contingent valuation data contributes to the growing literature on joint estimation.
Rather, they believe that catastrophe was averted only by their safety behaviours.
Moreover, potential trouble with unions could be partly averted since workers made redundant by new technology could be absorbed into new growth areas.
See all examples of avert
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.