Avoid

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /əˈvɔɪd/

Definitions

1. To stay away from or prevent something from happening
2. To deliberately stay clear of a person, place, or thing ; to take actions to stop something from happening or having an effect
3. To steer clear of certain situations or individuals ; to act in a way that prevents an event or outcome from occurring

Etymology: The most surprising thing about "avoid" is that its core sense was once literal emptying. In Old French, "esvuidier" meant "to empty out", built from "es-" (out) and "vuidier" (to empty). The root traces back through Vulgar Latin "vocitāre" and "vocitum" to the same family as Latin "vacuus", meaning empty, which is also the source of English "vacuum" and "vacant". So a word about clearing space eventually came to mean clearing oneself away from something unwanted. English borrowed the idea in Middle English as "avoiden", arriving through Anglo-Norman "avoider". It pushed out the native Old English "forbūgan", which literally meant "to bend away from". That older word survives only in its ghostly form "forbow" and was lost from common use, so the Norman-French term took over the job of expressing evasion.

Synonyms: escape, evade, dodge

Antonyms: confront, face