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as in to prevent
to keep from happening by taking action in advance
the quartermaster staved off a shortage by requisitioning more than enough supplies
Synonyms & Similar Words
Antonyms & Near Antonyms
Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of stave off
Harvard gutted out the disadvantages, though, staving off wave after wave of Boston University pressure to eventually force overtime.
—
Tom Mulherin, Boston Herald, 21 Jan. 2026
Each point helped stave off the Buffs, who kept hanging around.
—Shreyas Laddha, Kansas City Star, 21 Jan. 2026
Hoping to stave off Soviet military influence in the region, the US and UK built a major base on Diego Garcia in 1971.
—Christian Edwards, CNN Money, 20 Jan. 2026
The block went into effect last August, and according to Jassy, there isn’t much else Amazon and third-party sellers can do to stave off additional price increases.
—Emma Roth, The Verge, 20 Jan. 2026
See All Example Sentences for stave off
Tom Mulherin, Boston Herald, 21 Jan. 2026
Each point helped stave off the Buffs, who kept hanging around.
—Shreyas Laddha, Kansas City Star, 21 Jan. 2026
Hoping to stave off Soviet military influence in the region, the US and UK built a major base on Diego Garcia in 1971.
—Christian Edwards, CNN Money, 20 Jan. 2026
The block went into effect last August, and according to Jassy, there isn’t much else Amazon and third-party sellers can do to stave off additional price increases.
—Emma Roth, The Verge, 20 Jan. 2026
See All Example Sentences for stave off
Recent Examples of Synonyms for stave off
Verb
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Coffee grounds are also often used to deter slugs and snails, reduce weeds without chemicals, and even repel neighborhood strays.—
Lauren Landers,
The Spruce,
21 Jan. 2026
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The polarising move attracted the right people and repelled the wrong ones without her spending any energy filtering.—
Jodie Cook,
Forbes.com,
21 Jan. 2026
Verb
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Authorities called for additional measures to prevent overlap between performer and audience exit times and to minimize traffic disruption in the surrounding area.—
Hannah Abraham,
Forbes.com,
22 Jan. 2026
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Politically, there might also be little to gain from the international outcry that would arise were the high-profile artist detained or prevented from entering Beijing.—
Stephy Chung,
CNN Money,
22 Jan. 2026
Verb
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Some pets cannot resist chewing on houseplants.—
Brandee Gruener,
Southern Living,
22 Jan. 2026
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Institutions, subcultures and artists have always found ways to resist homogenization.—
Ahmed Elgammal,
Fortune,
22 Jan. 2026
Verb
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Its networking and optical connectivity chips function as the lifeline of modern data centers, averting bottlenecks as inference workloads expand across clusters.—
Trefis Team,
Forbes.com,
23 Jan. 2026
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Another special skill for binocular astronomers that isn’t intuitive is averted vision.—
Jase Parnell-Brookes,
Space.com,
23 Jan. 2026
Verb
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Quick didn’t exactly turn back the clock to the glory days, coming up with 23 of 27 stops.—
Andrew Knoll,
Daily News,
21 Jan. 2026
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The aircraft turned back and landed at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, where the president and those traveling with him were set to board a different aircraft and then resume travel to Switzerland for the global economic conference.—
Lalee Ibssa,
ABC News,
21 Jan. 2026
Verb
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The more descriptive call of the play saw the Wild forward step in front of a Florida pass at the defensive blue line and head off on a break away from there, snapping a wrist shot past Bobrovsky to briefly give Minnesota a 3-2 lead.—
Jess Myers,
Twin Cities,
25 Jan. 2026
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The colt won the Florida Derby and headed off to Louisville as one of the likely favorites — if not the favorite — for the Kentucky Derby.—
Clark Spencer,
Miami Herald,
22 Jan. 2026
Verb
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Adi turned away as the needle found its vein, scanning the other man for a reaction but finding none.—
Jonathan Miles,
Harpers Magazine,
27 Jan. 2026
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Multiple videos also show a federal agent in a gray jacket reaching into the scuffle empty-handed and emerging with a gun in his right hand, turning away from the man when the first shot is fired, then running across the street as more shots are fired.—
Nicole Sganga,
CBS News,
27 Jan. 2026
Verb
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For reasons that are quite possibly too unbearable to contemplate, a large group of American voters was not repulsed by such slander—they were actually aroused by it—and our politics have not been the same.—
Jeffrey Goldberg,
The Atlantic,
6 Jan. 2026
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Nicole is the kind of wife who moves out of her father’s home into her husband’s home, and who has been taught to be repulsed by the mushroom spores covering her body, just like all the women in their community.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
2 Jan. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Stave off.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/stave%20off. Accessed 29 Jan. 2026.
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