obviate

verb

1. (transitive)To anticipate and prevent or bypass (something which would otherwise have been necessary or required); to render (something) unnecessary.

   “[…] and in the kindest manner she now urged Fanny’s taking one for the cross and to keep for her sake, saying everything she could think of to obviate the scruples which were making Fanny start back at first with a look of horror at the proposal.”

   “The door it was necessary to keep ajar in hers, as in most cottages, because of the smoke; but she obviated the effect of the ribbon of light through the chink by hanging a cloth over that also.”

2. (transitive)To avoid (a future problem or difficult situation).

   “A mild dose of a warm active aperient to obviate costiveness, or to produce two motions daily, is generally very beneficial.”

   “If the predisposition to the disease has arisen from a plethoric state of the system, or from a turgescence in the vessels of the head, this is to be obviated by bleeding, both generally and topically, but more particularly the latter; an abstemious diet and proper exercise; and by a seton in the neck.”

   “Some change requests, rather than extend the scope, obviate some of the existing scope of a project.”

   “Thus, to obviate resistance, the discussion should be relevant to the patient′s problems.”

   “A government that thinks it can take on the world with Brexit can’t take back a bereaved teenaged mother with fundamentalist delusions. Moreover, the risk does not obviate two crucial facts in this case. First and foremost, she is a citizen […] Second, when Begum went to Syria she was a child.”

noun

1. Synonym of obviative.

adj

1. (not-comparable)Synonym of obviative.

   “Colville has a rich deictic system with forms which distinguish, for example, between source and location, with each possibility characterized as proximate and obviate as well (Mattina, 1973).”

   “The renovated system involved an obviate-proximate pronominal alternation (yu- vs. mu- respectively in Tolowa; see Bommelyn 1997), with the pronouns coming most likely out of the deictic pronoun system.”

   “This use of the obviate deictic category—that, there, those—contrasts sharply with the use of the proximate in the body of the narrative— this, here, these.”