Webster
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Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary · 1913

Avoid

A·void′, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Avoided; p. pr. & vb. n. Avoiding.] [OF. esvuidier, es (L. ex) + vuidier, voidier, to empty. See Void, a.] 1. To empty. [Obs.] Wyclif.

2. To emit or throw out; to void; as, to avoid excretions. [Obs.] Sir T. Browne.

3. To quit or evacuate; to withdraw from. [Obs.]

Six of us only stayed, and the rest avoided the room. Bacon.

4. To make void; to annul or vacate; to refute.

How can these grants of the king's be avoided? Spenser.

5. To keep away from; to keep clear of; to endeavor no to meet; to shun; to abstain from; as, to avoid the company of gamesters.

What need a man forestall his date of grief. And run to meet what he would most avoid ? Milton.

He carefully avoided every act which could goad them into open hostility. Macaulay.

6. To get rid of. [Obs.] Shak.

7. (Pleading) To defeat or evade; to invalidate. Thus, in a replication, the plaintiff may deny the defendant's plea, or confess it, and avoid it by stating new matter. Blackstone.

Syn. — To escape; elude; evade; eschew. — To Avoid, Shun. Avoid in its commonest sense means, to keep clear of, an extension of the meaning, to withdraw one's self from. It denotes care taken not to come near or in contact; as, to avoid certain persons or places. Shun is a stronger term, implying more prominently the idea of intention. The words may, however, in many cases be interchanged.

No man can pray from his heart to be kept from temptation, if the take no care of himself to avoid it. Mason.

So Chanticleer, who never saw a fox, Yet shunned him as a sailor shuns the rocks. Dryden.

A·void′, v. i. 1. To retire; to withdraw. [Obs.]

David avoided out of his presence. 1 Sam. xviii. 11.

2. (Law) To become void or vacant. [Obs.] Ayliffe.

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Noah Porter, editor (Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913). Public domain. Text as transcribed by MICRA, Inc., from Project Gutenberg. Changed for Deep Dive Bible: Greek, which our source spelled in Latin letters, set in Greek letters; entries of one spelling merged into one article; Greek words our source left out (shown as “?”), read from the 1898 printing, from the same plates (the Library of Congress’s copy), where the place could be found with certainty. Of the others, 1,362 (a word or a single letter each) were inferred by AI from the context by the dictionary’s own rules and are marked with a wavy underline (tap or point at one to see the note); the rest, which could not be inferred with confidence, are left as “?”.