stave off

• “An advocate of the five-second rule, Becky brushes it off on her shirt and gives it to him, hoping to stave off his hunger until she can breastfeed him again in the car.”

  Simon & Schuster: The Autoimmune Epidemic

• “Bribed with a little sunlight and a few prismatic tints, we bless our Maker, and stave off his wrath with hymns.”

  A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

• “When the company was about to topple with frightful losses for all investors, the government sought to stave off disaster by rounding up a thousand beggars, arming them with picks and shovels, and marching them through the streets of Paris as a band of miners off for the Land of Eldorado.”

  Simon & Schuster: The Worldly Philosophers

• “In 2376, Dr. Elizabeth Lense of the U.S.S. da Vinci used the same theragen derivative to stave off the effects of interphase on the team sent to the Defiant to salvage it (Interphase Book 1), though repeated inoculations resulted in the team members developing an immunity to it and needing booster shots more often than anticipated (Interphase Book 2).”

  Simon & Schuster: Miracle Workers

• “These drugs do help to stave off joint destruction, but in the process TNF blockers also cause rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis patients to have several-fold-higher rates of lymphoma a type of cancer.”

  Simon & Schuster: The Autoimmune Epidemic

• “And true that your fine bank will not cover this loan or advance you enough to stave off the Rothwell-Gornt attack on your stock?”

  Noble House

• “Somehow I've got to stave off the crash till Tuesday when we sign with Par-Con.”

  Noble House

• “I bought some chooch and popped it right there, hoping it would stave off a flash till we got back to the dorm.”

  Futures Imperfect

• “And on the 3rd of February he found himself in the old quarters, Mrs. Bunce having contrived, with much conjugal adroitness, both to keep Miss Pouncefoot and to stave off the Equity draftsman's wife and baby.”

  Phineas Finn

• “He ordered up fifteen thousand sheets of paper and drafted Benjamin Dudley, the engraver retained for the mint, to work up copper plates that would stamp the paper with “National Debt” in watermark, a measure to stave off counterfeiters.”

  Simon & Schuster: Robert Morris

Show 10 more examples...