obviate

Etymology

From Latin obviāre (“to block, to hinder”).

verb

1. (transitive) To anticipate and prevent or bypass (something which would otherwise have been necessary or required).
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. 1826, Richard Reece, A Practical Dissertation on the Means of Obviating & Treating the Varieties of Costiveness, page 181
   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. 1842, Gibbons Merle, John Reitch, The Domestic Dictionary and Housekeeper’s Manual: Comprising Everything Related to Cookery, Diet, Economy and Medicine. By Gibbons Merle. The Medical Portion of the Work by John Reitch, M.D., London: William Strange, 21, Paternoster Row, →OCLC, page 360, column 2
   Some change requests, rather than extend the scope, obviate some of the existing scope of a project. 2004, David J. Anderson, Agile Management for Software Engineering, page 180
   Thus, to obviate resistance, the discussion should be relevant to the patient′s problems. 2008, William S. Kroger, Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis: In Medicine, Dentistry, and Psychology, page 163
   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. 2019-02-21, Gary Younge, “Shamima Begum has a right to British citizenship, whether you like it or not”, in The Guardian

noun

1. (linguistics) Synonym of obviative

adj

1. (linguistics) 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). 1995, Michael Darnell, “Preverbal nominals in Colville-Okanagan”, in Pamela Downing, Michael P. Noonan, editors, Word Order in Discourse, page 91
   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. 1999, Edgar C. Polomé, Carol F. Justus, Winfred Philipp Lehmann, Language Change and Typological Variation: Language change and phonology, page 115
   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. 2009, Nikolas Coupland, Adam Jaworski, Sociolinguistics: The sociolinguistics of culture, page 410