prevent
/prɪˈvɛnt
/- Too often one finds that two or three players make the same runs into space when a little bit of thought would have prevented it happening.
- Anything that can prevent a tragedy from happening should be carefully adhered to.
- The prime focus for us is to prevent them happening in the first place.
- When it did eventually get underway there were several red flag incidents, stopping the session and preventing anyone really getting into their rhythm.
- It prevents people from stopping and loitering there for all hours of the night and deciding what mischief they're going to get up to.
- As if on cue, a tire started going flat Saturday, but a timely pit stop prevented him from losing much position.
Origin
Late Middle English (in the sense 'act in anticipation of'): from Latin praevent- 'preceded, hindered', from the verb praevenire, from prae 'before' + venire 'come'.
People originally used prevent to mean ‘to act in anticipation of or in preparation for something’, as in the 17th-century poet George Herbert's lines ‘Thus we prevent the last great day, / And judge our selves.’ Similarly, you could once talk about preventing someone's wishes or desires, for anticipating them. The word comes from Latin praevenire ‘to precede or hinder’. In time to prevent something was to thwart someone's plans, from which developed the idea of stopping something from happening. Prevention is better than cure dates from the 17th century. An early example comes from 1618: ‘Prevention is so much better than healing, because it saves the labour of being sick.’
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