Meaning of avoid in English

avoid

verb [ T ]

/əˈvɔɪd/ us

/əˈvɔɪd/

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to stay away from someone or something:

I try to avoid supermarkets on Saturdays - they're always so busy.

I'm anxious to avoid the motorway at rush hour.

Do you think Lukas is avoiding me? I haven't seen him all day.

Thesaurus: synonyms, antonyms, and examples

to avoid someone or something

avoidHave you been trying to avoid me?
steer clear ofI suggest steering clear of yellow snow.
keep/stay clear ofKeep clear of her - she’s got flu.
stay away fromThe experience was so bad that she stayed away from men for two years.
shunThe best companies are run by people who shun the limelight.
shunYou'll be shunned and totally isolated if you don't join in.

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to prevent something from happening or to not allow yourself to do something:

[ + -ing verb ] I try to avoid going shopping on Saturdays.

The report studiously avoided any mention of the controversial plan.

The plane narrowly avoided disaster when one of the engines cut out on take-off.

I left the pub to avoid a fight (= prevent a fight from happening).

Unnecessary paperwork should be avoided (= prevented) at all costs.

Thesaurus: synonyms, antonyms, and examples

to avoid doing something

avoidAvoid swimming in areas where sharks are known to congregate.
evadePlease don’t think I’m trying to evade my responsibility.
dodgeHe tried to dodge his military service.
run away fromI didn't often run away from difficult decisions.
shrink fromI've never been one to shrink from a challenge.
sidestepThis is not a responsibility you can sidestep.

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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.

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More examplesFewer examples

If we set off early tomorrow morning we'll avoid most of the traffic.
The bus driver swerved to avoid hitting the cyclists.
We need to examine how an accident like this can be avoided in the future.
Try to avoid foods which contain a lot of fat.
He took a different route which avoids the city centre.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Moving in order to avoid contact

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You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Avoiding action

Preventing and impeding

Idiom

avoid something like the plague

(Definition of avoid from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

avoid | American Dictionary

avoid

verb [ T ]

/əˈvɔɪd/

Add to word list Add to word list

to stay away from someone or something, or prevent something from happening, or not allow yourself to do something:

Do you think Robert is avoiding me? I haven’t seen him for a month.

I try to avoid going shopping on Saturdays because the stores are so crowded.

If you want to lose weight, avoid eating between meals.

avoidance

noun [ U ] us

/əˈvɔɪ·dəns/

The avoidance of injury is more important than winning a game.

(Definition of avoid from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

avoid | Business English

avoid

verb [ T ]

/əˈvɔɪd/ us

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to try to prevent something bad from happening:

A spokeswoman for the company said it was hoping to avoid industrial action.

Understanding differing viewpoints is a good start toward avoiding conflict in the workplace.

to try not to do something, or to try to stay away from something:

The government avoided the mistakes they made in the past.

avoid doing sth Credit cards can be a source of free credit if you can organize payments within the stipulated time limits, so as to avoid paying interest.

(Definition of avoid from the Cambridge Business English Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of avoid

avoid

Excessive lettering should be avoided on the figure and should be inserted in the legend.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The next section introduces another device called a lexical entry automaton, which is an elaborated form of trunks, for avoiding the computability problem.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

At this stage, acknowledgements, self-references and other forms of self-identification should be avoided.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

To estimate a smooth function, while avoiding overfitting the data, we can impose a smoothing penalty.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

In fact, in both pragmatics and sociolinguistics more generally, the term "ritual" is usually avoided.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The synonyms file provides more specific information so that the generation of certain irrelevant concepts can be avoided.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Many of the workgroups struggled with the challenge of keeping the coding ' general purpose ' and avoiding theory-specific feature tags.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The discussion was not always easy to control but, in order to move ahead with the work, this couldn't be avoided.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The sound material cannot then be avoided, being the voice of the processes of nature.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Spatial separation is one of these guidelines (in addition to avoiding frequency masking and maintaining some temporal-textural difference between simultaneous sounds).

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The status of arrangement today, however, is quite different; in new music, arrangement is mostly avoided and perceived as unfashionable.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Computing interferences are avoided by imposing structural constraints under the form of simple rules.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Both the individual and the community approach were above all driven by the aim of avoiding this major risk.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

As with the universal property, the primary application of the fusion property is as a proof principle that avoids the need for inductive proofs.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

In most respects the two approaches (parsimony or avoiding a possible omitted variable problem) trade off.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

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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.

What is the pronunciation of avoid?

Translations of avoid

in Chinese (Traditional)

避開, 逃避, 避免…

Meaning of avoid in English

Idiom

avoid | American Dictionary

avoidance

avoid | Business English

Examples of avoid

Translations of avoid

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