circumvent
/səːkəmˈvɛnt
/verb [with object]
1Find a way around (an obstacle): if you come to an obstruction in a road you can seek to circumvent it...
- However, those inventive motorcyclists have managed to circumvent the obstacle.
- He has gained a few moves in his repertoire, allowing him to circumvent obstacles.
- We broke the law on a weekly basis, when we circumvented the army's roadblocks in the roads.
1.1Overcome (a problem or difficulty) in a clever and surreptitious way: it was always possible to circumvent the regulations...
- To circumvent a possible problem of low data number, we pooled the observed and expected values for the three transposon families.
- This is not a very realistic assumption but it makes it possible to circumvent the problem of determining the optimal amount of reserves.
- Clever strategists that we were, we decided to circumvent this problem or objection by presenting a symposium rather than submitting independent papers.
2 archaic Deceive; outwit: he’s circumvented her with some of his stories
Derivatives
circumvention
/ noun ...- To be sure, credit bubbles are all about the circumvention, obstruction, impairment, and eventual breakdown of the market pricing mechanism.
- The portrait I have been describing is special not only for its circumvention of convention, but also because it belongs to a certain class of postcards known as ‘real photo’ postcards.
- We take any circumvention of immigration control very seriously.
Origin
Late Middle English: from Latin circumvent- 'skirted around', from the verb circumvenire, from circum 'around' + venire 'come'.