What's the difference between avert and subvert?

Avert


Definition:

  • (n.) To turn aside, or away; as, to avert the eyes from an object; to ward off, or prevent, the occurrence or effects of; as, how can the danger be averted? "To avert his ire."
  • (v. i.) To turn away.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) EEG arousal diminished as a function of distance, while arousal for direct gaze was always higher than for averted gaze, whatever the distance.
  • (2) Customers won a significant victory in the battle with the banks earlier this month when a mass hearing was averted at Hull county court.
  • (3) Dedicate it to the off-the-cuff remark – the gaffe, even – which averts a war.
  • (4) Tragedy was averted because there was a little delay as the prayers did not commence in earnest and the bomb strapped to the body of the girl went off and killed her,” he added.
  • (5) By 2020, the Gavi Alliance estimates that pentavalent vaccines will avert more than 7 million deaths.
  • (6) The channelling of these monohydroxy fatty acids to cholesteryl esters provides a mechanism which can alter the amount of lipoxygenase products incorporated into cellular phospholipids, thus averting deleterious changes to cell membranes.
  • (7) The people were free, the dictator was dead, a mooted massacre had been averted – and all this without any obvious boots on the ground.
  • (8) A high potassium diet could possibly preserve these arteries and avert much renal failure.
  • (9) This preliminary evaluation suggests that needle laparoscopy may avert bowel perforation in some instances and may permit laparoscopic tubal sterilization to be performed in some women who would otherwise, because of multiple previous operations, be denied laparoscopy.
  • (10) As things stand, a second Great Depression has been averted, but growth has ranged from the weak in Europe to the unspectacular in the United States.
  • (11) A radial orientation of the buckle averts this complication.
  • (12) George Osborne averted a Tory backbench rebellion in the Commons on Monday when the Treasury gave a powerful hint that the government could defer a planned 3p increase in fuel duty.
  • (13) The younger the infant and the longer the breastfeeding, the greater the estimated benefits in terms of deaths averted.
  • (14) She writes: Reassurances from the US that short-term measures will be instigated to avert the upcoming debt-ceiling deadline have given European equity markets a jolt upwards, helping to stem some of the risk aversion of the past few days.
  • (15) According to Defra, the hierarchy is a means to avert "unnecessary impacts on the environment" from development.
  • (16) Despite spending a record amount of money to sway the mid-term US elections, environmental groups and high-profile donors failed to avert a sweeping Republican victory last week, in which candidates opposing the regulation of greenhouse gases and championing the expansion of tar sands pipelines won big.
  • (17) Over the next 30-50 years, we may have breakthrough technologies that close the loop by recycling steel or using very different cement types but for now, we have to deal with the technologies we have.” In many ways, the debate over carbon capture and storage is a struggle between two competing visions of the societal transformation needed to avert climate disaster.
  • (18) The company has lurched from one crisis to the next over the past two years, including industrial action this spring by the chorus, with a strike only narrowly averted .
  • (19) However, the mass campaign is probably less cost-effective in averting neonatal tetanus deaths, due to its broader targetting.
  • (20) He told MPs: “We chose a difficult compromise to avert the most extreme plans by the most extreme circles in Europe.” Although the leftist leader urged his Syriza party to endorse the reforms, 36 MPs either voted against or abstained on the measures, three fewer than in a similar vote last week.

Subvert


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To overturn from the foundation; to overthrow; to ruin utterly.
  • (v. t.) To pervert, as the mind, and turn it from the truth; to corrupt; to confound.
  • (v. i.) To overthrow anything from the foundation; to be subversive.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) In such conditions, proposals which subvert fundamental academic principles meet no effective opposition.
  • (2) His reports alleged active, sustained and covert collusion to subvert the election which, if confirmed, could constitute treason.
  • (3) This is the first such virally-encoded soluble cytokine receptor to be identified, and may represent a more general mechanism by which viruses subvert the host immune system.
  • (4) He told the court: “We have been trying at the bar to imagine whether we can think of any other group of legal or natural persons, terrorist suspects, arms dealers, Jews, in respect of whose evidence one might even begin to think that one could tenably say, ‘Well, of course, in looking at this evidence I have been very careful because I know from the past that these people are a bit devious and a bit unworthy, and the only thing they’re really interested in is subverting public health.’ ” Yet last week’s judgment, running to 1,000 paragraphs, confirmed in excoriating detail just how determined big tobacco has been down the decades to achieve precisely this goal.
  • (5) Liu is serving 11 years for incitement to subvert state power after co-writing Charter 08, a call for democratic reforms in China.
  • (6) China is furious at the decision to recognise Liu, jailed for incitement to subvert state power after co-authoring a call for democratic reforms.
  • (7) Mona Deeley, a producer for Cinema Badila: Alternative Cinema on BBC Arabic TV , said: "The secret cinema is an interesting initiative for both subverting the ban on cinema and as a form of civil and cultural resistance."
  • (8) These findings, together with the fact that the worm's gut contains hemosiderin, suggest that the worm subverts the vascular reaction and causes within the nodule a controlled hemorrhage that serves the worm's nutritional needs.
  • (9) No wry observations or whoops-a-daisy trombones to subvert the conceit for period lolz.
  • (10) It claimed to be the minutes of a late 19th-century meeting of Jewish leaders, in which they discussed their goal of a global plan to subvert the morals of gentiles and control the press and the global economy.
  • (11) It was our moment to make our point by subverting the message using the show itself.” In an early meeting with the production team, they were, the statement claims, handed images of “pro-Assad graffiti – apparently natural in a Syrian refugee camp”.
  • (12) The attack on al-Jazeera is part of an assault on free speech to subvert the impact of old and new media in the Arab world.
  • (13) Government inspections of garment factories are infrequent and easily subverted by corruption, and the garment industry, by far Bangladesh's biggest exporter, is highly influential in government.
  • (14) One year later, a court sentenced him to 11 years for incitement to subvert state power.
  • (15) "The bottom line is that we're all unique individuals – even when I'm trying to imitate Mariah, it's still through my lens," she explains when we get on to the subject of subverting pop for the masses.
  • (16) "He repeatedly sacrificed his own interests, even his liberty, in order to defend these values and challenge and subvert the most powerful factions that were their enemies," Greenwald wrote.
  • (17) And particularly once you start splitting them over jurisdictions and things like that it becomes much more difficult to subvert their intentions.
  • (18) We speculate that a major mechanism by which some oncogenes promote metastatic ability is by subverting a signal transduction process, resulting in activation of a set of genes, some of which appear to promote metastatic ability.
  • (19) But Thorne’s working life has been spent subverting genres, through his Bafta-winning work on supernatural thriller The Fades and Shane Meadows’s bleak, beautiful coming-of-age miniseries This Is England ’86 and ’88.
  • (20) His adrenalin-pumping shows are woven into American life, yet subvert its capitalist fundamentals, that innate American principle of screw-thy-neighbour, in favour of what he insists to be "real" America – working class, militant, street-savvy, tough but romantic, nomadic but with roots – compiled into what feels like a single epic but vernacular rock-opera lasting four decades.