avoid.
To try not to meet or communicate with (a person); to shun.
Meaning & usage
To try not to meet or communicate with (a person); to shun.
To stay out of the way of (something harmful).
I avoided the slap easily.
One town was flooded from the storm, while the other town avoided the storm.
To keep away from; to keep clear of; to stay away from.
I try to avoid the company of gamblers.
To try not to do something or to have something happen.
To make empty; to clear.
To make void, to annul; to refute (especially a contract).
To defeat or evade; to invalidate.
To emit or throw out; to void.
To leave, evacuate; to leave as empty, to withdraw or come away from.
To get rid of.
To retire; to withdraw, depart, go away.
To become void or vacant.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English avoiden, from Anglo-Norman avoider, Old French esvuidier (“to empty out”), from es- + vuidier, from Vulgar Latin *vocitāre < Vulgar Latin *vocitum, ultimately related to Latin vacuus. Displaced native Old English forbūgan (literally “to bend away from”).
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.