1 to prevent sth bad from happening:
[VN] The accident could have been avoided. * They narrowly avoided defeat in the semi-final. * The name was changed to avoid confusion with another firm. * [VN-ing] They built a wall to avoid soil being washed away.
2 to keep away from sb/sth; to try not to do sth:
[VN] He's been avoiding me all week. * She kept avoiding my eyes (= avoided looking at me). * I left early to avoid the rush hour. * [V-ing] I've been avoiding getting down to work all day. * You should avoid mentioning his divorce.
3 [VN] to prevent yourself from hitting sth:
I had to swerve to avoid a cat.
IDIOMS
avoid sb/sth like the plague (informal) to try very hard not to meet sb, do sth, etc:
She's been avoiding me like the plague since the party last Saturday.
moreatTRAPn.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for avoid is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is avoid a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, avoid is tagged as verb.
Does avoid appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — avoid appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
