Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use obviate in a sentence

15 example sentences · verb, noun, adjective

Obviate means to anticipate and prevent or bypass (something which would otherwise have been necessary or required); to render (something) unnecessary. Example: “We re-retired this machine because our newest equipment truly obviates it, and there's no realistic prospect that it will ever save us any money in the future.”

Examples of obviate by meaning

verbTo avoid (a future problem or difficult situation).

  • Some change requests, rather than extend the scope, obviate some of the existing scope of a project.2004, David J. Anderson, Agile Management for Software Engineering, page 180
  • Thus, to obviate resistance, the discussion should be relevant to the patient′s problems.2008, William S. Kroger, Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis: In Medicine, Dentistry, and Psychology, page 163
  • Moreover, the risk does not obviate two crucial facts in this case.2019 February 21, Gary Younge, “Shamima Begum has a right to British citizenship, whether you like it or not”, in The Guardian

adjectiveSynonym of obviative.

  • Colville has a rich deictic system with forms which distinguish, for example, between source and location, with each possibility characterized as proximate and obviate as well (Mattina, 1973).1995, Michael Darnell, “Preverbal nominals in Colville-Okanagan”, in Pamela Downing, Michael P. Noonan, editors, Word Order in Discourse...
  • The renovated system involved an obviate-proximate pronominal alternation (yu- vs. mu- respectively in Tolowa; see Bommelyn 1997), with the pronouns coming most likely out of the deictic pronoun system.1999, Edgar C. Polomé, Carol F. Justus, Winfred Philipp Lehmann, Language Change and Typological Variation: Language change and phonology...
  • This use of the obviate deictic category—that, there, those—contrasts sharply with the use of the proximate in the body of the narrative— this, here, these.2009, Nikolas Coupland, Adam Jaworski, Sociolinguistics: The sociolinguistics of culture, page 410

More sentences with obviate

  • We re-retired this machine because our newest equipment truly obviates it, and there's no realistic prospect that it will ever save us any money in the future.From the entry re-retire
  • Slight depression of male porophores obviates protuberance beyond general level of body surface.1963, Records of the Indian Museum, volumes 53-55, page 109. From the entry outrolling
  • Reversing loops at each terminal would obviate turning the car-carrying trains.1961 December, “The Channel Tunnel—a realistic proposal”, in Trains Illustrated, page 724. From the entry reversing loop
  • This error is obviated to a large degree when the perforated strip arrangement is used.1953, William H. Offenhauser, 16-mm Sound Motion Pictures, page 403. From the entry mislight
  • We have done several things we thought were to tighten the system so that we would obviate any other scandals or improprieties.1988 June 29, William L. Dickinson, Hearings before the full committee and the Acquisition Policy Panel, Committee on Armed Service (US…. From the entry step on a rake
  • He points out, however, that to obviate inurement care should be exercised to exclude insufficient doses or such as might give rise to heroinomania.1905, Report on the Advancements in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Therapeutics, page 100. From the entry heroinomania
  • The glass fibre body has the advantage of lightness and obviates the need for painting as the material is self-coloured in the standard B.R. maroon livery.1961 October, “Car carriage by rail - at home and abroad: 1. New B.R. "covered wagons"”, in Trains Illustrated, page 594. From the entry livery
  • There are two brake blocks per wheel of the locomotive, and each brake block is actuated by its own cylinder, which obviates rigging (except to the hand parking brake).1959 March, “The 2,500 h.p. electric locomotives for the Kent Coast electrification”, in Trains Illustrated, page 124. From the entry brake block
  • Senseless tossing about at night before sleep comes on is often obviated by a healthful fatigue from a pleasant occupation, provided the fatigue is not sufficient to shatter the nerves.1928 December 15, Frank J. Hirschboeck, “Treatment of Functional Heart Disease”, in The Journal of the American Medical Association…. From the entry toss

Meaning of obviate

  1. verb To anticipate and prevent or bypass (something which would otherwise have been necessary or required); to render (something) unnecessary.
  2. verb To avoid (a future problem or difficult situation).
  3. noun Synonym of obviative.

Full definition of obviate

Questions about obviate in a sentence

How do you use obviate in a sentence?
Obviate is used as a verb, noun and adjective. For example: “We re-retired this machine because our newest equipment truly obviates it, and there's no realistic prospect that it will ever save us any money in the future.”
What is a short sentence with obviate?
“Reversing loops at each terminal would obviate turning the car-carrying trains.”
What does obviate mean?
Obviate means to anticipate and prevent or bypass (something which would otherwise have been necessary or required); to render (something) unnecessary.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: obviate (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use obviate in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/obviate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.