Meaning & use
avoidance
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Meanings
noununcountable
The act of staying away from someone or something, or of preventing something from happening.
Grammar: Uncountable; often followed by 'of': avoidance of risk.
Patterns
- avoidance of something
- tax avoidance
- avoidance behaviour
Her avoidance of the topic made everyone uncomfortable.
The company's tax avoidance schemes were legal but unpopular.
Avoidance of eye contact can be a sign of shyness.
noununcountabletechnical
In psychology, a way of coping by escaping from stressful situations instead of facing them.
Grammar: Technical use; often in phrases like 'avoidance coping' or 'avoidance behavior'.
Patterns
- avoidance coping
- avoidance behavior
His avoidance coping strategies kept him from dealing with the problem.
Therapist: 'Avoidance will only make your anxiety worse in the long run.'
Common combinations
- avoidance of
- The avoidance of conflict is not always a good thing.
- tax avoidance
- Tax avoidance is legal, unlike tax evasion.
- avoidance behavior
- Avoidance behavior can limit your life.
- avoidance strategy
- They adopted an avoidance strategy to dodge the issue.
Synonyms and how they differ
- evasion
- Evasion often implies a deliberate, sometimes dishonest, attempt to escape something, like a duty or a question; avoidance is broader and can be unintentional.
- escape
- Escape focuses on getting away from a place or situation that already holds you; avoidance focuses on keeping away from the start.
Opposites
Word family
- avoid verb
- To stay away from or prevent something.
- avoidable adjective
- Able to be avoided.
- unavoidable adjective
- Impossible to avoid.
Commonly confused: avoidance or evasion?
avoidance vs evasion
Evasion is often used for illegal or dishonest dodging (tax evasion), while avoidance can be legal or neutral.
Practice
Which sentence uses 'avoidance' correctly?
Choose one answer.
'Avoidance of the issue' is correct because avoidance is uncountable and takes 'of'. Option 1 uses 'an avoidance', which is wrong because it is uncountable. Option 2 uses 'avoidance to answer', which is not the correct pattern. Option 3 uses a plural verb 'are', which does not agree with the uncountable noun.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “avoidance”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.