as in avoids
to get or keep away from (as a responsibility) through cleverness or trickery
just a ruse to shun the debt collectors
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Recent Examples of shuns
Vanya is a closeted gay man who shuns intimacy and Sonia is a neurotic spinster who feels unnoticed and unloved.
—
Pam Kragen, San Diego Union-Tribune, 13 Oct. 2025
Laugh is the kind of rap mastery that shuns maximalism for pristine, unadorned poetics.
—Andre Gee, Rolling Stone, 29 Aug. 2025
Instead of a tale of entrapment or escape, Ruth is a story about how a woman full of longing can operate inside a collective that shuns the very notion of wanting.
—Hillary Kelly, The Atlantic, 20 Aug. 2025
Pam Kragen, San Diego Union-Tribune, 13 Oct. 2025
Laugh is the kind of rap mastery that shuns maximalism for pristine, unadorned poetics.
—Andre Gee, Rolling Stone, 29 Aug. 2025
Instead of a tale of entrapment or escape, Ruth is a story about how a woman full of longing can operate inside a collective that shuns the very notion of wanting.
—Hillary Kelly, The Atlantic, 20 Aug. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for shuns
Verb
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And in recent years, Major League Baseball has been pushing the World Series later into the year as playoffs expand and the league avoids Sunday games so as not to overlap with the NFL.—
Paul Rogers,
Mercury News,
23 Oct. 2025
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The agent logs only essential identifiers, avoids storing raw sensor data, caps how much and how often information is recorded, and disables third-party analytics by default.—
Keivan Navaie,
IEEE Spectrum,
22 Oct. 2025
Verb
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Like the Chinese government and most of its people, the movie evades mentions of the mass casualties after the pandemic restrictions were removed, therefore foregoing an opportunity to reflect on whether the deaths were preventable and what lessons might be learned.—
Yangyang Cheng,
NPR,
4 Oct. 2025
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For now, love evades understanding—which means that finding someone will remain, much of the time, a pain in the ass.—
Faith Hill,
The Atlantic,
27 Sep. 2025
Verb
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This partnership was designed to reach an urban audience that is culturally engaged in art, music and design, but still escapes to the park for a morning run.—
Joelle Diderich,
Footwear News,
27 Oct. 2025
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Back in Europe, Savoie, France, is also seeing a bump in travel interest, drawing visitors to its alpine villages, ski towns and year-round mountain escapes.—
Khloe Quill,
FOXNews.com,
26 Oct. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Shuns.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/shuns. Accessed 30 Oct. 2025.
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