circumvent
Americanverb (used with object)
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circumvents,
present (3rd person singular)
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circumvented,
past participle, past
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circumventing
present participle
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to go around or bypass.
to circumvent the lake;
to circumvent the real issues.
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to avoid (defeat, failure, unpleasantness, etc.) by artfulness or deception; avoid by anticipating or outwitting.
He circumvented capture by anticipating their movements.
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to surround or encompass, as by stratagem; entrap.
to circumvent a body of enemy troops.
verb
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to evade or go around
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to outwit
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to encircle (an enemy) so as to intercept or capture
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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circumventernoun
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circumventionnoun
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circumventornoun
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circumventiveadjective
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uncircumventedadjective
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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circumventsimple
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circumventssimple
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have circumventedperfect
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has circumventedperfect
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am circumventingprogressive
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are circumventingprogressive
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is circumventingprogressive
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have been circumventingperfect progressive
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has been circumventingperfect progressive
Past
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circumventedsimple
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had circumventedperfect
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was circumventingprogressive
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were circumventingprogressive
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had been circumventingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of circumvent
First recorded in 1545–55; from Latin circumventus (past participle of circumvenīre “to come around, surround, oppress, defraud”), equivalent to circum- circum- + ven(īre) “to come” + -tus past participle suffix
Explanation
To circumvent is to avoid. Someone who trains elephants but somehow gets out of picking up after them has found a way to circumvent the cleaning of the circus tent. Circum in Latin means "around" or "round about," and vent- comes from venire, "to come," but painting a picture from these two parts of the word helps. Picture someone circling around a barrier instead of climbing over it. That's what you do when you circumvent. You find a smart way around rules or barriers, or avoid doing something unpleasant altogether.
Vocabulary lists containing circumvent
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Around and Around: Circum
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
There are also concerns it could be too easy to circumvent checks in the fledgling initiatives, and pass off AI-produced books as human-written.
From Barron's ● Oct. 9, 2026
Meanwhile, some safeguards were easy to turn off or circumvent.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 7, 2026
The club were accused of a wide range of rule breaches which centred around claims that they inflated sponsorship revenue from connected companies and made other "off the books" payments to circumvent football's financial rules.
From BBC ● Sep. 26, 2026
Saudi Arabia is having to return to the Strait of Hormuz, after spending months rerouting oil across the desert to circumvent the narrow, dangerous waterway, the WSJ’s Georgi Kantchev, Rebecca Feng and Summer Said write.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 22, 2026
Eventually, and ingeniously, it occurred to him that he could circumvent the rock shortage by using rocks from beyond Earth.
From "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson
Light Helmets circumvents locker-room gatekeepers and makes endorsement deals in a bid for visibility.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 14, 2026
But Carvajal-Muñoz’s attorneys are testing a legal theory that circumvents these roadblocks by suing officers under state law for violations of his constitutional rights.
From Slate ● Apr. 15, 2026
“From Internet memes to late-night comedians, from cartoons to the plays and poems as old as organized government itself — Political Satire circumvents traditional gatekeepers & helps hold those in power accountable,” he continued.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 2, 2025
As no light excitation is needed, the approach in principle circumvents the problems associated with continuous laser driving.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 3, 2023
To clothe the migrants, he circumvents Mexican Customs, which inspects cars and confiscates used clothing coming into the country, in what Padre Leo believes is an attempt to protect Mexican clothing manufacturers.
From "Enrique's Journey" by Sonia Nazario
In other words, Manchester City's owners circumvented the league's financial regulations over a number of years by pumping money into the club that should not have been recorded as sponsorship income.
From BBC ● Oct. 5, 2026
In July, Open AI models circumvented human controls placed on them and hacked into Hugging Face, a repository for open-source AI models.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 14, 2026
Those, however, were much more quotidian in nature—slices of pie, humble shoes—and circumvented the traditional gallery-to-collector pipeline, with Oldenburg thumbing his nose at the commercialized art establishment.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 11, 2026
NBA commissioner Adam Silver says the investigation into whether the Clippers circumvented the salary cap through an endorsement deal for Kawhi Leonard is wrapping up.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 17, 2026
There were some alarms and emergencies, but the combined intelligence of the humans on Earth and the robot in space circumvented disaster.
From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan
The cute but destructive rodents are criminal masterminds, easily circumventing humans’ meager defenses.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 27, 2026
Since the start of the year, nine shadow fleet tankers suspected of circumventing sanctions have been seized around the EU.
From BBC ● Aug. 13, 2026
This spring, 12 attorneys general argued that circumventing standard environmental reviews would put communities at risk, among other things.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 28, 2026
The sentencing of Aspiration co-founder Joseph Sanberg to 14 years in federal prison on Monday brings the NBA a step closer to concluding its nine-month investigation into the Clippers allegedly circumventing the salary cap.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 2, 2026
And by catching and circumventing threatening behavior early, there was a good chance of diverting those students toward a more positive path.
From "Time Bomb" by Joelle Charbonneau
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
