avert

in a sentence

grouped by contextual meaning

When asked, her guilt was clear from the way she averted her eyes

He saw the others in his group glance at him, embarrassed, and then avert their eyes quickly.  (source) Lois Lowry, The Giver, 1993

Hailey does that BS move where you look at someone out the corner of your eye, but you don't want them to know that you care enough to look, so you avert your eyes.  (source) Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give, 2017

A shy creature (or a guilty one), Crow averted her face when she spoke.  (source) Ellen Raskin, The Westing Game, 1978

Any excuse to avert my eyes from the other passengers.  (source) Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why, 2007

"Fatima," the girl said, averting her eyes.  (source) Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist, 1988

He averts his eyes.  (source) Veronica Roth, Divergent, 2011

The men averted their gazes when I passed, and I saw them cast a rope I had touched into the waves.  (source) Madeline Miller, Circe, 2018

Their face did not move and they did not avert their eyes.  (source) Ayn Rand, Anthem, 1937

Edgar was walking down the aisle, neither blinking nor averting his gaze.  (source) David Wroblewski, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, 2008

But in the end, fear wins out, she averts her eyes, turns away, and goes to replace Y.T. at vat position number nine.†  (source) Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash, 1992

But he averted his eyes until it was over.  (source) Ernest Cline, Ready Player One, 2011

He tried to avert his eyes from the man now lying on the ground.†  (source) James Dashner, The Death Cure, 2011

Lincoln tried to avert a war.

Always a new scheme, a new plot, a new disaster to avert.  (source) Madeline Miller, Circe, 2018

The plain fact was that an ecological disaster had been narrowly averted.  (source) Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park, 1993

Four inclinations toward overcooked lamb had been narrowly averted, more than five bottles of Latour had been poured, and the two members of the Politburo had been equitably seated and equitably served.  (source) Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow, 2016

The news reported that Polish government officials had gone to Germany to meet with that country's leadership to try to avert war.  (source) Leon Leyson, The Boy on the Wooden Box, 2013

My driver, a chain-smoking, sweaty little man who introduced himself as Gholam, drove nonchalantly and recklessly, averting collisions by the thinnest of margins, all without so much as a pause in the incessant stream of words spewing from his mouth:  (source) Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner, 2003

"Only you'll have to do even better if the uprisings are to be averted," he says.  (source) Suzanne Collins, Catching Fire, 2009

Urging progress, trying to avert letting this small project mire itself.  (source) Jane Smiley, A Thousand Acres, 1991

It is proposed to make a small presentation to you, in commemoration of your prompt and courageous action in warning the train on the — inst., and thus averting what must, humanly speaking, have been a terrible accident.  (source) Edith Nesbit, The Railway Children, 1906

Ron was still slightly inclined to laugh at Hermione's boggart, but an argument was averted by the sight that met them on the top of the steps.  (source) J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, 1999

All dreaded it, all sought to avert it.  (source) Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, 1865

After a period of tense negotiations, money was allotted and a potential calamity averted.  (source) John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, 1994

I could go home knowing that I had averted trouble for the second time.  (source) Octavia Butler, Kindred, 1979