spoil

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
fireproof
flameproof
frustration
guard against something
hamper
hang
have someone/something hanging round your neckidiom
preclude
preclusion
preclusive
prejudice
prevent
scuttle
smother
suffocate

thwart | American Dictionary

thwart
verb[ T ]
us/θwɔrt/
to stop something from happening or someone from doing something:
The city council thwarted his reform efforts.

Examples of thwart

thwart
Anxiety about the relativist abyss in which 'all pasts are equal' has thwarted efforts to evaluate alternatives to 'objective science'.
Should other dependent reasons enter the picture, then it is not at all clear that the (normal) goal of arbitration would be thwarted.
However, unlike the ' self-active ' strategies they employed, their efforts to pursue strategies based on seeking external sources of help were thwarted.
Unlike film, music has the capacity for simultaneous juxtaposition that similarly thwarts forward motion.
With popular government thwarted, citizens had nothing to lose and everything to gain by realizing that the new government was a conspiracy.
The first has to do with how well expectations line up with actualities, whether they are realised or thwarted in the course of one's life.
It is imperative therefore that leaders of the indigenous community stop using arguments based on alleged 'paramountcy' to thwart consociational government.
A leader thwarts a challenge if she either retains a winning coalition or prevents the challenger from assembling a winning coalition.
A jet engine fails to start even though its parts are in perfect repair - thus thwarting a hijacker.
The largest significant coefficient for left ideology is hardly diminished in absolute magnitude, in moving from thwarted to fulfilled voters (respectively, 4.09 to 3.46).
Poised at the historical dawn of music technology, we are presented with a unique opportunity to thwart issues of gender equality and equity.
He interpreted the incident as a microcosm of revolutionary longing thwarted by bourgeois society.
They may also seek to thwart the work of the collaborative because they see it as a threat to themselves or their interests.
Even if a satisfactory storyline has been created - and as we shall see later this is not inevitable - its continuation may be thwarted.
Another convention was the infernal invocation, in which spirits were conjured up to assist in carrying out a plan or to thwart someone's actions.
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.