Other forms: avoided, avoiding, avoids
To avoid something is to stay away from it deliberately. Avoid the motorway, avoid him at parties, avoid making a decision.
It takes an -ing form and never an infinitive: avoid making, never avoid to make. That is one of the most reliable small rules in English and one of the most often broken. Note the legal distinction that matters: tax avoidance is arranging your affairs to pay less legally, and tax evasion is illegal — the two words are not interchangeable and newspapers mix them up constantly. Unavoidable means it could not have been prevented.
1verbavoidTo stay away from somebody or something on purpose.
“He avoided the subject for the whole evening.”
2verbpreventTo prevent something from happening.
“The crash was avoided by about a metre.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
avoid is a way of keeping clear.
Old French esvuidier meant to empty out — es-, out, plus vuidier, to empty, from the same root as void. To avoid something was originally to empty yourself away from it, and the sense of keeping clear came from there.
Vulgar Latin
*vocitāre
Old French
esvuidier — to empty out
Anglo-Norman
avoider
Middle English
avoiden
English, today
avoid
From Middle English avoiden, from Anglo-Norman avoider, Old French esvuidier (“to empty out”), from es- + vuidier, from Vulgar Latin vocitāre < Vulgar Latin vocitum, ultimately related to Latin vacuus. Displaced native forbūgan.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA