steer clear of

1. Stay away from, avoid, as in Dad warned us to steer clear of Dr. Smith and his poor advice. This idiom alludes to guiding a vessel away from some obstacle. Its figurative use was first recorded in 1723.

Example Sentences

Yet for as much as “Train Dreams” speaks to present-day ills — the filmmakers had to steer clear of a real wildfire while staging one of their own — Bentley and Kwedar are not pessimists by nature and their films could never be described as despairing, especially when it comes to human beings.

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The warning to Republicans in Tuesday’s election results is that Democrats are turning the tables on affordability, especially when they steer clear of leftist cultural snares.

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To prepare residents for the influx of police, community organizations shared on social media a list of best practices: Avoid making eye contact with law enforcement, don’t argue in public and steer clear of highly patrolled areas.

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As they settle in to living together—while keeping as much distance as possible between them on that couch—they try to steer clear of both intimacy and discussion of old family wounds.

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Does this mean investors should steer clear of quality stocks?

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Related Words

• baffle 
• confound 
• dodge 
• evade 
• flee 
• foil 
• frustrate 
• outrun 
• outwit 
• puzzle 
• shun 
• stall 
• stonewall 
• thwart