1
as in to bypass
to avoid having to comply with (something) especially through cleverness
employees who try to circumvent the company's dress code
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
2
as in to avoid
to avoid by going around
circumvented the traffic jam by taking an alternate route
Synonyms & Similar Words
Antonyms & Near Antonyms
3
as in to traverse
to travel completely around
most casual joggers will be able to circumvent the reservoir without too much of a strain
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Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of circumvent
According to family lore, Henry had somehow circumvented the state’s strict law against educating the enslaved and become literate.
—
Eugene Robinson, The Atlantic, 3 Feb. 2026
Learning French, German, Italian, or Spanish also offered a means of circumventing Ireland’s draconian censorship regime.
—Literary Hub, 2 Feb. 2026
Last year, Zohran Mamdani successfully pulled off a longshot bid for mayor despite strong opposition from the Post and from The New York Times’ opinion section, largely by running a campaign fueled by circumventing old media with buzzy viral videos and stunts.
—Max Tani, semafor.com, 2 Feb. 2026
Their Eyes also reveals the workers speaking openly in Slack group chats, sharing their frustrations and their ideas for circumventing the crowdworking platforms.
—Farren Fei Yuan, Artforum, 1 Feb. 2026
See All Example Sentences for circumvent
Eugene Robinson, The Atlantic, 3 Feb. 2026
Learning French, German, Italian, or Spanish also offered a means of circumventing Ireland’s draconian censorship regime.
—Literary Hub, 2 Feb. 2026
Last year, Zohran Mamdani successfully pulled off a longshot bid for mayor despite strong opposition from the Post and from The New York Times’ opinion section, largely by running a campaign fueled by circumventing old media with buzzy viral videos and stunts.
—Max Tani, semafor.com, 2 Feb. 2026
Their Eyes also reveals the workers speaking openly in Slack group chats, sharing their frustrations and their ideas for circumventing the crowdworking platforms.
—Farren Fei Yuan, Artforum, 1 Feb. 2026
See All Example Sentences for circumvent
Recent Examples of Synonyms for circumvent
Verb
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And in some cases, the highly talented prospects may bypass one or two of those levels, or at least travel quickly up the ladder.—
Daniel Sperry,
Kansas City Star,
4 Feb. 2026
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In this near-field regime, the light bypasses the diffraction limit and probes nanoscale features.—
Aamir Khollam,
Interesting Engineering,
4 Feb. 2026
Verb
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In Texas, wind, solar and storage provided about 25% of power for the grid's 27 million customers -- a major increase over 2021 and a key reason blackouts were largely avoided, said John Hensley, a senior vice president at the American Clean Power Association, an industry group.—
MATTHEW DALY,
Arkansas Online,
8 Feb. 2026
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Healey avoided answering the question, instead stating that Massachusetts officials tipped off the feds to the $7 million SNAP fraud scheme uncovered by Foley’s office in December.—
Tim Dunn,
Boston Herald,
7 Feb. 2026
Verb
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The wolf traversed through much of the Sierra Nevada and was part of a pack in Tulare County, which is located west of Fresno and just north of Bakersfield.—
Dean Fioresi,
CBS News,
8 Feb. 2026
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The disorder resulted in far fewer Palestinians traversing the border between Egypt and Gaza than was expected, nearly two years after Israel seized and shut the crossing.—
Oren Liebermann,
CNN Money,
7 Feb. 2026
Verb
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Somehow their petition—miraculously evading Confederate interception and traveling, via the Bahamas, to Washington—arrived on the Navy secretary’s desk, though they likely weren’t released until the end of the war.—
Drew Gilpin Faust,
The Atlantic,
8 Feb. 2026
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Edwards, who trains such police departments as the New York Police Department on drone threat mitigation, points to fiber-optic drones that can evade radio frequency detection systems as a particular concern.—
Anna Schecter,
CBS News,
7 Feb. 2026
Verb
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Stellarators use magnets with complicated shapes circling the outside of the system’s vacuum vessel to create all the magnetic fields needed to confine the fusion plasma.—
Prabhat Ranjan Mishra,
Interesting Engineering,
4 Feb. 2026
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The Artemis 2 astronauts won't be landing, but will instead circle the moon on a 10-day trip to test systems and hardware for future expeditions to the surface.—
Eric Lagatta,
USA Today,
4 Feb. 2026
Verb
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There were no sitters within that catalogue of misses — nothing toe-curling or likely to do a million views on YouTube — but his profligacy allowed Dortmund to escape with a 2-1 win.—
Sebastian Stafford-Bloor,
New York Times,
9 Feb. 2026
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To escape Earth’s energy crunch, SpaceX is taking AI to orbit, where near-constant solar energy replaces Earth’s strained power grids.—
Mrigakshi Dixit,
Interesting Engineering,
9 Feb. 2026
Verb
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But Assad assured his aides that regime forces were coming from the south to encircle and defend the capital.—
Robert F. Worth,
The Atlantic,
6 Feb. 2026
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Its head doesn’t resemble the shape of a skull, like most other humanoids, but instead a cylinder with a flat face encircled by a ring of light.—
Rachyl Jones,
semafor.com,
4 Feb. 2026
Verb
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This framing effectively provides a rationale for ignoring officers’ commands during field encounters.—
Christina Buttons,
Washington Post,
3 Feb. 2026
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Fedorov, the new defense minister, acknowledges the scale of the problem, telling the Ukrainian parliament some 2 million people are ignoring their call-up papers, while 200,000 others have deserted.—
Andrew Carey,
CNN Money,
3 Feb. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Circumvent.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/circumvent. Accessed 10 Feb. 2026.
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