circumvent
verb
Lynne McTaggart
Did you know?
The Circular History of Circumvent
If you’ve ever felt as if someone was running circles around those trying to get something done, you have an idea of the origins of circumvent—it comes from the Latin word circumventus, a form of the verb circumvenire, meaning “to surround or go around” (circumvenire combines the adverb circum, “in a circle around,” and the verb venire, “to come”). The earliest uses of circumvent referred to a tactic of hunting or warfare in which the quarry or enemy was encircled and captured. This meaning doesn’t exactly square with modern uses of the word. Today, circumvent more often suggests avoidance than entrapment; to come full circle, it typically means to “get around” someone or something, as by evading a problem or avoiding the law.
Examples of circumvent in a Sentence
Jay McInerney, New York Times Book Review, 10 June 2007
… Rondon and Lyra paddled to the right side, where they found a channel that circumvented the worst part of the rapids.
—Candice Millard, The River of Doubt, 2005
His appreciation of this finer side of life is circumvented by a cynicism that he tells me is common to Eastern Europeans.
—Lynne Tillman, Motion Sickness, 1991
The thirty-six-hour workweek established by the garment-industry code was circumvented by having the workers punch out at five P.M., leave by the back door (their usual entrance), then return by the front door and work until eleven P.M. without punching the clock.
—Melissa Hield, Speaking For Ourselves, (1977) 1984
We circumvented the problem by using a different program.
He found a way to circumvent the law.
Brad Japhe, HollywoodReporter, 25 Oct. 2025
Cosmologists and mathematical physicists often seek ways to circumvent the theorem, looking to quantum gravity (or other non-standard scenarios) to break us out of the requirements that general relativity imposes.
—Big Think, 24 Oct. 2025
And, though users can make the most of lackluster AI moderation (Grok Imagine) or figure out clever ways to circumvent guardrails (Sora) in order to misrepresent famous people, the greater danger probably comes from videos that purport to capture events involving unknown parties.
—Miles Klee, Rolling Stone, 23 Oct. 2025
Ballmer and the team are under investigation by the NBA following a report that Leonard allegedly accepted a $28 million endorsement from Aspiration as a way to circumvent the league’s salary cap, according to media reports.
—City News Service, Oc Register, 21 Oct. 2025
See All Example Sentences for circumvent
Cite this Entry
“Circumvent.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/circumvent. Accessed 29 Oct. 2025.
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circumvent
verb
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