avoidance

Or is it what we call avoidance when we want avoidance to sound principled?

From Salon ● Jul. 20, 2026

He later added that "for the avoidance of doubt" there would be a contest.

From BBC ● Jun. 16, 2026

He praised Powell’s avoidance of engaging in tit for tat with the president.

From Barron's ● Jun. 2, 2026

It’s a description of a room where groupthink had replaced honest conversation — not through force, but through accumulated avoidance.

From MarketWatch ● May 27, 2026

“I understand your confusion,” she continues, “as our goal was avoidance of the hostiles. It still is.”

From "The Last Cuentista" by Donna Barba Higuera

In worry exposure the person is told to set a daily time to purposefully seat in a "worry chair" and think repeatedly about the thoughts that are anxiety provoking without engaging in distractions or avoidances.

From New York Times ● Oct. 20, 2016

Superstitions are not free—rituals and avoidances cost an animal in terms of energy or lost opportunities.

From US News ● Jun. 8, 2011

Here it is proposed intentionally to set up a galvanic couple to prevent corrosion; there, with the same object in view, the avoidances of galvanic action is counselled.

From Acetylene, the Principles of Its Generation and Use A Practical Handbook on the Production, Purification, and Subsequent Treatment of Acetylene for the Development of Light, Heat, and Power by Leeds, F. H. (Frank Henley)

Miss Agatha did not shrink from impossible effort: furthermore she confused the terms ignorance and innocence, and in her furtive avoidances contrived to throw a suggestion of indelicacy upon the most simple of elemental things.

From Imprudence by Young, F.E. Mills

In the upper gallery too, I wish that there may be, if the place will yield it, some fountains running in divers places from the wall, with some fine avoidances.

From The Essays of Francis Bacon by Bacon, Francis