Evitative

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    grammatically expressing the notion that something is avoided or feared: a grammatical mood found in some Australian Aboriginal languages. not-comparable

    "The non-past non-evitative potential corresponds both to the English indicative future and to all imperatives (including jussive and hortatory imperatives); the evitative is used to mark future events that are feared or to be avoided , and corresponds to English "lest..." constructions, except that it is not limited to subordinate clauses."

Synonyms

All synonyms
aversiveaversive

Example

More examples

"The non-past non-evitative potential corresponds both to the English indicative future and to all imperatives (including jussive and hortatory imperatives); the evitative is used to mark future events that are feared or to be avoided , and corresponds to English "lest..." constructions, except that it is not limited to subordinate clauses."

Etymology

From Latin ēvītāre (“to avoid”), from ē- (“out”) + vītāre (“to shun”).

Related phrases

evitative case

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.