avoid
[uh-void]
- to keep away from; keep clear of; shun: to avoid a person; to avoid taxes; to avoid danger.
- to prevent from happening: to avoid falling.
- Law. to make void or of no effect; invalidate.
- Obsolete. to empty; eject or expel.
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Origin of avoid
Synonym study
1. Avoid, escape mean to come through a potentially harmful or unpleasant experience, without suffering serious consequences. To avoid is to succeed in keeping away from something dangerous or undesirable: to avoid meeting an enemy. Escape suggests encountering peril but coming through it safely: to escape drowning.
Synonyms
See more synonyms for avoid on Thesaurus.com1. evade, elude, dodge.
Antonyms
1. confront, face, encounter.
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for avoided
Contemporary Examples
By allowing him to live, Marshal avoided the shame of killing an unarmed heir-apparent.
Now, I think he avoided it because of something that happened a few months after he left.
“Words of condemnation and marginalization were avoided,” he says.
Even as President Obama has avoided getting the military more involved in Iraq, the mission has gradually expanded.
I avoided him and to this day I have not seen him in person since then.
Historical Examples
If it may be avoided, I will not see the whole of your youth consumed in anxious watchings.
PhilotheaLydia Maria Child
I avoided the house of Mr Clayton, and absented myself from his chapel.
The truth could not be concealed, nor the contemplation of it avoided.
Fragments from The Journal of a Solitary ManNathaniel Hawthorne
They are not necessary; they might be avoided; at their worst they could be tempered.
The Conquest of FearBasil King
Then the danger of getting too much coloring will be avoided.
Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
avoid
- to keep out of the way of
- to refrain from doing
- to prevent from happeningto avoid damage to machinery
- law to make (a plea, contract, etc) void; invalidate; quash
- obsolete to expel
- obsolete to depart from
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Word Origin
C14: from Anglo-French avoider, from Old French esvuidier, from vuidier to empty, void
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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Word Origin and History for avoided
avoid
v.
c.1300, from Anglo-French avoider "to clear out, withdraw (oneself)," partially anglicized from Old French esvuidier "to empty out," from es- "out" (see ex-) + vuidier "to be empty," from voide "empty, vast, wide, hollow, waste" (see void (adj.)). Originally a law term; modern sense of "have nothing to do with" also was in Middle English and corresponds to Old French eviter with which it was perhaps confused. Meaning "escape, evade" first attested 1520s. Related: Avoided; avoiding.
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper