What's the difference between avoid and pretend?

Avoid


Definition:

  • (a.) To empty.
  • (a.) To emit or throw out; to void; as, to avoid excretions.
  • (a.) To quit or evacuate; to withdraw from.
  • (a.) To make void; to annul or vacate; to refute.
  • (a.) To keep away from; to keep clear of; to endeavor no to meet; to shun; to abstain from; as, to avoid the company of gamesters.
  • (a.) To get rid of.
  • (a.) To defeat or evade; to invalidate. Thus, in a replication, the plaintiff may deny the defendant's plea, or confess it, and avoid it by stating new matter.
  • (v. i.) To retire; to withdraw.
  • (v. i.) To become void or vacant.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "Zayani reportedly cited the political sensitivity of naturalising Sunni expatriates and wanted to avoid provoking the opposition," the embassy said.
  • (2) The catheter must be meticulously fixed to the skin to avoid its movement.
  • (3) Sample processing appears effective in avoiding spontaneous oxalogenesis.
  • (4) The results of the evaluation confirm that most problems seen by first level medical personnel in developing countries are simple, repetitive, and treatable at home or by a paramedical worker with a few safe, essential drugs, thus avoiding unnecessary visits to a doctor.
  • (5) A 24-h test trial employing a dry target demonstrated a robust memory for the training manifested in passive avoidance behavior.
  • (6) But it will be a subtle difference, because it's already abundantly clear there's no danger of the war being suddenly forgotten, or made to seem irrelevant to our sense of what Europe and the world has to avoid repeating.
  • (7) Madrid now hopes that a growing clamour for future rescues of Europe's banks to be done directly, without money going via governments, may still allow it to avoid accepting loans that would add to an already fast-growing national debt.
  • (8) Obamacare price hikes show that now is the time to be bold | Celine Gounder Read more No longer able to keep patients off their plans outright, insurers have resorted to other ways to discriminate and avoid paying for necessary treatments.
  • (9) The UK's standard position on ICC indictees is to avoid all contact unless "essential".
  • (10) This death toll represents 25% of avoidable adult deaths in developing countries.
  • (11) Surgical removal was avoided without complications by detaching it with a ring stripper.
  • (12) Crown prince Sultan Bin Abdel Aziz said yesterday that the state had "spared no effort" to avoid such disasters but added that "it cannot stop what God has preordained.
  • (13) Mindful of their own health ahead of their mission, astronauts at the Russia-leased launchpad in Kazakhstan remain in strict isolation in the days ahead of any launch to avoid exposure to infection.
  • (14) This method avoids disturbance of the cellular metabolism.
  • (15) We determined to further clarify the mechanism of this transmural coronary "steal" employing intracoronary DP administration, thereby avoiding systemic hypotension.
  • (16) Maintenance therapy was always steroid-free to start with (cyclosporin+azathioprine) but in almost one half of our oldest survivors, it failed to avoid rejection and we had to add low-dose oral steroids for at least several months.
  • (17) Finally, before the advent of the third-party payment, operations were avoided because of the financial burden.
  • (18) Long-distanced urethrocystopexy which permits to avoid an unwanted increase of outflow resistance with following retention of urine should be preferred.
  • (19) We conclude that mortality rates in the elderly could be improved by encouraging elective surgery and avoiding diagnostic laparatomy in patients with incurable surgical disease.
  • (20) The labia minora as a pedicle graft avoids the problems encountered by conventional methods.

Pretend


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To lay a claim to; to allege a title to; to claim.
  • (v. t.) To hold before, or put forward, as a cloak or disguise for something else; to exhibit as a veil for something hidden.
  • (v. t.) To hold out, or represent, falsely; to put forward, or offer, as true or real (something untrue or unreal); to show hypocritically, or for the purpose of deceiving; to simulate; to feign; as, to pretend friendship.
  • (v. t.) To intend; to design; to plot; to attempt.
  • (v. t.) To hold before one; to extend.
  • (v. i.) To put in, or make, a claim, truly or falsely; to allege a title; to lay claim to, or strive after, something; -- usually with to.
  • (v. i.) To hold out the appearance of being, possessing, or performing; to profess; to make believe; to feign; to sham; as, to pretend to be asleep.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) His anti-politics act may just be a shtick – pretending he's still on Have I Got News for You, satirising politics even though he's right at the centre of it – but it liberates him from the usual constraints.
  • (2) "Obviously [writers in translation] have a disadvantage and there's no sense pretending they don't, of being read in translation," said Gekoski.
  • (3) Tony Abbott pretended to support the renewable energy industry before the election but is now “launching a full-frontal attack” according to Labor’s environment spokesman Mark Butler.
  • (4) The Telegraph's secret taping of Cable and fellow Liberal Democrat ministers while pretending to be concerned constituents has raised eyebrows in some media quarters, but the newspaper has claimed a "clear public interest" defence for its actions.
  • (5) It is hard to tell who has really suffered, and who is only pretending.
  • (6) Respecting the frequency of invalidity this cancer pretends the second place among these diseases.
  • (7) When this parliament votes for another referendum as it inevitably will, thanks to the perpetual crutch that the Greens provide, let’s not pretend it reflects the will of the Scottish people, because it doesn’t.
  • (8) Non-doms could no longer pretend to live in Monaco while living in the UK for four working days a week.
  • (9) But equally, you’re ignoring how these people feel if you try and pretend they don’t feel their area is changing.
  • (10) Additionally, the Schmidt-Furlow investigators looked at instances where female interrogators had fondled prisoners, or pretended to splash menstrual blood upon them.
  • (11) Stewart Lee with a mask made of meat, pretending to be Canadian?
  • (12) Yes, there are other reasons why a boy might take a clock out of its casing & pretend he’d made it.
  • (13) It would be idle to pretend that Cameron doesn't have talents as a leader.
  • (14) Their leaders are charging round the country pretending they are going to get an overall majority, but in their heart of hearts they know it is not true, you can see it in their eyes.” The deputy prime minister, whose party has been in coalition with the Conservatives since 2010, said the next question for the public was “that since neither David Cameron or Ed Miliband are going to walk into Downing Street on their own, who is it the voters want at their side”.
  • (15) By pretending to ignore the scientific evidence, AquaBounty is doing readers a disservice.
  • (16) Pro-Europeans don't do themselves any favours by trying to pretend that it didn't happen.
  • (17) Indeed watching the prime minister singling out unemployed youngsters for uniquely punitive measures while pretending it is for their own good, cheered on by a gang of braying chums, it looks less like the behaviour of a national statesman and more like the petty vindictiveness of a schoolyard bully.
  • (18) And he must not pretend to be ignorant of the consequences of continuing to burn coal or take refuge in a "carbon cap" or some "target" for future emission reductions.
  • (19) During the collection of a one-hour spontaneous language sample from each child the experimenter pretended 20 times not to understand and asked, "What?"
  • (20) He would go around the communities and pretend to have a conversation with people but really his eyes were on the children playing," she says.