Eschew (pronounced es-choo)
To
abstain or keep away from; to refuse to use or participate in; stand aloof
from; shun; avoid.
1300–1350:
From the Middle English eschewen from
the Old French eschiver & eschever (shun, eschew, avoid, dispense
with (which in the third-person present was eschiu),
from the Frankish skiuhan (to dread,
shun, avoid), from the Proto-Germanic skeukhwaz (source also of the Old High
German sciuhen (to avoid, escape) and the German scheuen (to fear, shun, shrink
from), from scheu (shy, timid). In German
the evolution produced the Old High German sciuhen
& skiuhan (to frighten away) and
the German scheuchen (shoo, shoo
away, drive away). The Italian schivare (to avoid, shun, protect from) from schivo (shy,
bashful) are both related loan words from the Germanic. Eschew, eschewed & eschewing are verbs and eschewal & eschewance are nouns; the most common noun plural is eschewals.
Orson Wells (1915-1985) as Sir John Falstaff, Chimes of Midnight (1965).
The convention of use has evolved to suggest the verb eschew should not be applied to the avoidance or shunning of a person or specific physical object but only to the ideas, concepts, or other intangibles and William Shakespeare (1564–1616), in Sir John Falstaff and the Merry Wives of Windsor (1602), though the concept a binary: “What cannot be eschew'd must be embrac'd”. Avoid is the most often used synonym, similar but not quite in the same sense are “circumvent”, “boycott” and “forgo”. Eschew is a verb, the nouns are eschewment, eschewal & eschewer.
Lindsay Lohan eschewing some underwear and the fastening of a couple of buttons, Los Angeles, 2010.
The surviving dialectical variation is the Scots umbechew (umschew & umchew now extinct), the construct being umbe- + eschew. As a transitive, it meant “to avoid; shun” and as an intransitive “to get away; escape”. The prefix umbe- is from the Middle English um-, umbe- & embe-, from Old English ymb- & ymbe- (around), from the Proto-Germanic umbi- (around, about, by, near), from the primitive Indo-European hzmbhi (round about, around). It was cognate with the Dutch om- (around), the German um- (around), the Latin amb- (around, about), the Latin ambi- (both), the Ancient Greek ἀμφί (amphí) (around, about), the Sanskrit अभि (abhi) (against, about). The prefix (meaning around; about) is no longer productive, obsolete outside mostly Scots dialects.
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