stave off

present singular third person staves off · participle present staving off · participle past staved off · past staved off · participle past stove off · past stove off

1. idiomaticTo prevent something from happening; to obviate or avert.

   He drank plenty of orange juice, hoping to stave off the cold making the rounds at the office.

   3 more examples

   [Enid] answer'd with such craft as women use, / Guilty or guiltless, to stave off a chance / That breaks upon them perilously, […]

   1859, Alfred Tennyson, “Enid”, in Idylls of the King, London: Edward Moxon & Co., […], →OCLC, page 64

   LANCE: Only through my training as a sex machine am I able to stave off genital turgidity.

   2011, Jamie Noguchi, Yellow Peril: The View

   So it was perhaps political backlash from the trebling of public transport times between Harlech to Porthmadog if buses took over that staved off immediate talks of closure and the release of a £241,000 subsidy (2020: £3.8m).

   2020 April 8, Howard Johnston, “East-ended? When the ECML was at risk”, in Rail, page 69