Avoiding

How to spell avoiding

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce avoiding

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does avoiding mean?

1. verbKeeping away from something or someone, or preventing something from happening.

Avoiding in a sentence

• She kept avoiding the topic of money during dinner.

• He was avoiding the motorway because of the roadworks.

Where does avoiding come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the present participle of the verb 'avoid', which English took from the Anglo-Norman and Old French 'avoidier', a variant of 'esvuidier' meaning 'to empty out' or 'to clear away'. That word was built on the root 'void', from Latin 'vocivus' and 'vacuus', meaning 'empty' or 'unoccupied', the same family that gives us 'vacuum' and 'vacant'. The earliest English sense in the 1300s was literally to empty or to make void, as in clearing a room or quashing a legal document. Over time the meaning shifted from physically emptying a space to the modern idea of keeping away from something or staying clear of it. The single 'd' before the '-ing' is the quiet trap here, since writers sometimes wrongly double it; remember the base verb 'avoid' already ends in a vowel-plus-'d' that is not doubled.

How the word is built

• a- (intensive prefix from Old French)
• void (empty)
• -ing (present participle/gerund suffix)