stave off
stave off verb: to prevent something from happening; to obviate or avert.
Verb
stave off (third-person singular simple present staves off, present participle staving off, simple past and past participle staved off or stove off)
- To prevent something from happening; to obviate or avert.
- He drank plenty of orange juice, hoping to stave off the cold making the rounds at the office.
- [Enid] answer'd with such craft as women use, / Guilty or guiltless, to stave off a chance / That breaks upon them perilously, […]1859, Alfred Tennyson, “Enid”, in Idylls of the King, London: Edward Moxon & Co., […], →OCLC, page 64
stave off meaning in Tamil, Kannada and Arabic
stave off in Tamil
- தவிர்
stave off in Kannada
- ತಪ್ಪಿಸು, ತಡೆ
stave off in Arabic
- prevent something from happening
- رَدَّ radda, صَدَّ ṣadda
Forms of stave off
| third-person singular present | staves off |
|---|---|
| present participle | staving off |
| past participle | staved off |
| past | staved off |
| past participle | stove off |
| past | stove off |
Questions about stave off
- What does stave off mean?
- Stave off means to prevent something from happening; to obviate or avert.
- What is stave off in Tamil?
- Stave off in Tamil is தவிர். See Stave off meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is stave off?
- Stave off is a verb.
- What is the past tense of stave off?
- The past tense of stave off is staved off.
Words near stave off in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: stave off (page history and authors); stave off (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); stave off (Kannada Wiktionary) (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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-stave off.ogg.
Cite this entry: “stave off.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/stave_off. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.