Word.ws English Dictionary

circumvene

circumvene is the alternative form of circumvent.

Meaning of circumvent

Verb

circumvent (third-person singular simple present circumvents, present participle circumventing, simple past and past participle circumvented)

  1. (transitive) to avoid or get around something; to bypass
    • The line turns a sharp right-angle to the north to circumvent the town, and then plunges straight into the 1 in 50, which lasts for nearly 20 miles with few intermissions, and some pitches of 1 in 40.1950 April, Timothy H. Cobb, “The Kenya-Uganda Railway”, in Railway Magazine, page 265
  2. (transitive) to surround or besiege
  3. (transitive) to outwit or outsmart
    • We are mortified by not being thought worthy of trust; and there is also a feeling of small triumph in circumventing those who doubt either our inclination or our power of service.1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], Francesca Carrara. […], volume III, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, pages 279–280

Forms of circumvene

third-person singular presentcircumvenes
present participlecircumvening
past participlecircumvened
pastcircumvened

Questions about circumvene

What is circumvene the alternative form of?
Circumvene is the alternative form of circumvent.

Words near circumvene in the dictionary

  1. circumvallations
  2. circumvallatory
  3. circumvascular
  4. circumvection
  5. circumvections
  6. circumvene
  7. circumvent
  8. circumventable
  9. circumvental
  10. circumvented
  11. circumventer

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: circumvene (page history and authors); circumvent (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “circumvene.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/circumvene. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.