Avoid and Discourage

Avoid

Avoid verb - To get or keep away from (as a responsibility) through cleverness or trickery.

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Discourage and avoid are semantically related. In some cases you can use "Discourage" instead a verb "Avoid".

Discourage verb - To lessen the courage or confidence of.

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Avoid and discourage are semantically related. Sometimes you can use "Avoid" instead a verb "Discourage".

people	avoid people	discourage people
kind	avoid kind	discourage kind
sort	avoid sort	discourage sort
killing	avoid killing	discourage killing
Other words: war, anyone, humans, attacks, enemies.

In fact, if you refuse, he even lampshades the trope and tries to discourage you from using Surf to avoid battling him.

Source: Video Game / Pokémon Black 2 and White 2
In Bruce Sterling's Islands in the Net (set 20 Minutes into the Future), there's no shortage of 'real' food, but one major character eats only synthetic so as to avoid the toxins that real plants put in their tissues to discourage animals from, y'know, eating them.

Source: Future Food Is Artificial
BattleTech's Clans are the latter version of this trope - rules of warfare and codes of honour shared among the clans are carefully designed to minimize interplanetary collateral damage, discourage brawling, and avoid hard feelings - at least the dirty personal conflicts-kind.

Source: Blood Sport

Cite this Source

Discourage and Avoid. (2016). Retrieved 2026, July 28, from https://thesaurus.plus/related/avoid/discourage

Avoid & Discourage. N.p., 2016. Web. 28 Jul. 2026. <https://thesaurus.plus/related/avoid/discourage>.

Discourage or Avoid. 2016. Accessed July 28, 2026. https://thesaurus.plus/related/avoid/discourage.

Google Ngram Viewer shows how "avoid" and "discourage" have occurred on timeline