Meaning & use
avert
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Meanings
verbtransitive
To stop something unpleasant or dangerous from happening, usually by acting in time.
Grammar: Always takes an object: avert a crisis, not avert from a crisis.
Patterns
- avert something
- avert a crisis
Quick thinking by the pilot averted a disaster.
The two countries signed a deal to avert a trade war.
She apologized quickly to avert an argument.
verbtransitiveformal
To turn your eyes or face away from something, often because you do not want to see it or meet someone's look.
Grammar: The object is usually your eyes, gaze or face: he averted his eyes.
Patterns
- avert your eyes
- avert your gaze
He averted his eyes when the nurse showed the needle.
She averted her gaze, embarrassed by the stranger's stare.
Viewers were warned to avert their eyes from the bright flash.
Word forms
| third person singular | averts |
|---|---|
| past tense | averted |
| past participle | averted |
| -ing form | averting |
Common combinations
- avert a crisis
- Last-minute talks managed to avert a crisis at the border.
- narrowly avert
- The town narrowly averted a flood when the barrier held.
- avert disaster
- A simple software patch averted disaster for the airline.
- avert your eyes
- I had to avert my eyes during the scary scene.
- avert a strike
- The union and the company met overnight to avert a strike.
Synonyms and how they differ
- prevent
- Prevent is the everyday word and works for small things too, while avert sounds more serious and suggests a looming danger.
- avoid
- Avoid often means keeping away from something by your own choice, whereas avert means stopping a threat that was already heading your way.
- ward off
- Ward off is more informal and suggests pushing back an attack or illness, whereas avert suits an event such as a crisis.
Opposites
Word family
- aversion noun
- a strong dislike of something
- averse adjective
- strongly unwilling, as in averse to risk
- avertable adjective
- able to be prevented
- inadvertent adjective
- not done on purpose
Commonly confused: avert or advert? avert or avoid?
avert vs advert
Advert is a short form of advertisement in British English, or a formal verb meaning to refer to something. It has nothing to do with preventing things.
avert vs avoid
Avoid means to keep away from something; avert means to stop it from happening.
Practice
The negotiators worked all night to ___ a strike that would have shut down the railway.
Choose one answer.
Avert means to stop something bad from happening. Advert is a different word (an advertisement), and convert and revert do not take a strike as an object in this sense.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “avert”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.