Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To anticipate and dispose of effectively; render unnecessary. See Synonyms at prevent.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To meet.
- To meet half-way, as difficulties or objections; hence, to meet and dispose of; clear out of the way; remove.
Wiktionary
- v. transitive To bypass a requirement or make it unnecessary; to avoid a future problem or difficult situation.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. obsolete To meet in the way.
- v. To anticipate; to prevent by interception; to remove from the way or path; to make unnecessary.
WordNet 3.0
- v. do away with
- v. prevent the occurrence of; prevent from happening
Etymologies
- From Latin obviāre ("to block, to hinder"). (Wiktionary)
- Latin obviāre, obviāt-, to hinder, from obvius, in the way; see obvious. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Edit: In a (rare) moment of self-doubt I looked up 'obviate' wondering if it's one of those words I've either misheard or used incorrectly.”
“Any law enforcement agent who conducted a wiretap or private search would thereby always be presumptively guilty of a crime, and would have to cross his fingers and take his chances that prosecutors or jurors would ignore or obviate the law in his particular case.”
“And if you support a no-exceptions statutory ban on torture, what do you think about the use of mechanisms to obviate or get around the law in exceptional cases – prosecutorial discretion, jury nullification, presidential pardon, etc.?”
“Perhaps Gardner et al considered £2,480,750 a small price to pay to obviate a formal inquiry into the liquidation of a club he once ran but the CVA certainly leaves many unanswered questions. x-headThe football authorities have invested so much effort into building a case against third-party ownership of players that Sunday's failure to prove wrongdoing at Queen's Park Rangers was a blow for the Football Association.”
The Guardian: Stan Kroenke's offer makes no mention of fate of Arsenal's cash
“Mr. Obama's jobs bill, which proposes $130 billion of aid for state and local governments, would obviate these reforms and take lawmakers off the hook for goosing workers' pensions in return for their political support.”
“Wikinvest co-founder Parker Conrad asserted in his pitch that Wikinvest and others might eventually obviate the financial services providers that rely on consumers not paying attention, or having opacity drive revenue in their products.”
The Huffington Post: Ben Mangan: Fintech Leaves Fake-o-nomics Behind
“In order to obviate that, because money is fungible and budget-cutting is suddenly in vogue, you would think that government agencies would be aggressively trimming noncritical, nonlife-threatening expenditures and diverting scarce resources to genuinely pressing needs.”
“Of course, the intention of this is allow con members to make informed choices for the Hugo awards; it does not obviate the need to support the authors of this material with real purchases that they get royalty monies for.”
“Do you believe that the use of prosecutorial discretion, jury nullification, the necessity defense, executive clemency and any other mechanisms that are available to obviate or circumvent criminal statutes is unethical in all cases, without exception? and, uh, things like executive clemency are all firmly within the law.”
Matthew Yglesias » Conservatives’ Unhinged Attacks on Nancy Pelosi
“Mostly, I've narrowed it down to Lakeside or Cuernavaca, though my mind, regrettably, isn't narrow enough to obviate any changes that may include somewhere else.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘obviate’.
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1100
abound, technology, branch of knowled..., prognosticate, automaton, matron, an older married ..., realm, special field of ..., kingdom, annals, historical records and 981 more...
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GRE 2014
abase, abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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Familiar
Just a list of words
fulminate, unctuous, malediction, lumpenproletariat, descry, surfeit, sententious, supernumerary, unabashed, picayune, obliterate, decry and 109 more...
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Words
phantasmagoria, eviscerate, avast, simulacrum, varicose, oblique, gestalt, ersatz, vernal, vivace, stellate, synecdoche and 321 more...
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GRE Barron's 800
abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abject, abjure, abscission, abscond, abstemious, abstinence, abysmal, accretion and 787 more...
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GRE
droll, dyspeptic, ebullient, ardor, edify, efficacy, malinger, mannered, martinet, maudlin, mendacious, mendicant and 101 more...
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Bright Folk
Some words I come across in my legal studies, though not really legal jargon. And the usage doesn't shout, "hey, I think I'm smart", just simply, "this is what applies in this context."
verbose, inter alia, ostentatious, usurp, presumptuous, anachronistic, unfettered, sine qua non, amenable, subversive, irreducible, penumbra and 28 more...
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to lessen
words to shorten, weaken, or lessen
attenuate, attrition, assuage, effete, truncate, curtail, nadir, severance, obviate, phthisis, eviscerate
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GRE 1100
drudgery, implore, hapless, nuance, wrest, incipient, inadvertent, tremulous, bristle, euphemism, disdain, pugnacious and 346 more...
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try to use now and then
exacerbate, inveterate, obviate, verbose, exasperate, disingenuous, squit, ingenue, Opiate, opioid, revile, decrepit and 14 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6689 more...
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gre2
aberrant, aberration, aboveboard, abrasive, abstemious, acme, admonish, affable, affluent, alacrity, allegory, alleviate and 1824 more...
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Go over
mollify, obstinate, obviate, occlude, onerous, obscure, paragon, pedantic, perfunctory, placate, placid, prodigal and 364 more...
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to memorize
words i need to memorize
aberrant, abscond, advocate, aggrandize, amalgamate, ambiguous, ambrosial, anomalous, antediluvian, antipathy, arbitrate, assuage and 163 more...
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1100 words you need to know
GRE words
voracious, indiscriminate, replete, steeped, eminent, perceive, intrepid, compound, automaton, reticent, interminable, drudgery and 288 more...
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Words I Know
List of most of the words I've learned
garner, abase, abate, abdicate, abduct, aberration, abet, abhor, abide, abject, abjure, abnegation and 1046 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for obviate.

myth17 If only I could obviate GRE from my Graduate school admission. Aug 12, 2012
lweber5@scf.edu To obviate the risk of serious injury. -Websters Dictionary pg.55 Sep 23, 2010
sweetzingiber to make unnecessary Jul 31, 2009