Definition
To turn aside or prevent the occurrence of something harmful. In legal usage, "avert" appears most characteristically in jury instructions and judicial opinions addressing self-defense and necessity, where the question is whether a defendant had available means to prevent or deflect an imminent danger before resorting to force. The term functions as a legal standard marker: whether danger could be averted by safe and apparent means determines, in many formulations, whether a defensive act was legally excusable or justified.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To turn aside or away; to ward off or prevent the occurrence or effects of something.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To turn aside or away; to ward off or prevent the occurrence or effects of something. "To avert his ire." (Milton.) "Till ardent prayer averts the public woe." (Prior.)
The common and legal meanings are closely aligned, but the legal use narrows the term to a specific evaluative function: whether available, apparent, and safe means of averting danger existed at the moment of a defendant's action. In ordinary English, averting is simply preventing. In legal instructions, whether averting was possible is a threshold determination that conditions the availability of a defense.
Common Confusion
"Avert" and "escape" are not legal synonyms, even though both involve avoiding danger. Courts have repeatedly condemned jury instructions that substitute "escape" for "avert" or conflate the two concepts. Escape implies flight or retreat; averting danger may include standing one's ground through defensive action. The distinction tracks the broader doctrinal divide between retreat requirements and stand-your-ground principles. A defendant is not required merely to escape danger to claim self-defense — the question is whether apparent, safe means of averting the danger existed, which is a broader inquiry.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working with self-defense doctrine in historical sources should treat "avert" as a doctrinal term of art that has carried real legal weight in jury instruction analysis. Because the word appears in instructions rather than statutes, its legal significance surfaces primarily in appellate decisions reviewing those instructions — not in codified definitions.
Two research traps arise. First, early cases using "avert" in self-defense instructions may be cited approvingly or disapprovingly depending on whether the reviewing court found the instruction adequate; the word itself is not inherently problematic, but its proximity to "escape" in phrasing was. Second, modern stand-your-ground statutes have largely displaced the common law framework in which "avert" performed this function. Researchers analyzing jurisdictions that have enacted duty-to-retreat abolitions should not assume that historical "avert" standard cases remain good law on the question of when force was necessary.
In necessity doctrine, "avert" performs a similar threshold function: courts ask whether the defendant had no apparent safe means of averting the harm that the necessity defense was invoked to justify. This parallel use across self-defense and necessity is worth tracing when researching either doctrine.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's is the primary historical dictionary source for this term, and its treatment is narrow but precise. Bouvier grounds the entry entirely in case-specific usage rather than offering a general definition, citing a Kentucky appellate case for the proposition that "avert" in a jury instruction was not equivalent to "escape" — a distinction the court found legally material. The second citation reinforces that the availability of apparent and safe means of averting danger is the standard governing self-defense excusability.
This is characteristic of Bouvier's method when treating words that are not independent legal concepts but rather legally operative terms embedded in doctrine. The dictionary is not defining "avert" as a noun or category of law; it is flagging how courts have policed the word's use in instructions. Researchers should read this entry as a pointer to jury instruction jurisprudence, not as a definition of an independent cause of action or defense.
No other standard historical legal dictionaries (Black's, Stroud's, Words and Phrases) are included in the source set for this entry. Given the term's function, Words and Phrases would be the most productive next resource for additional case law on the term's judicial treatment.
Jurisdictional Note
The legal significance of "avert" in self-defense instructions varies with whether a jurisdiction imposes a duty to retreat. In retreat jurisdictions, the inquiry into whether danger could be safely averted is more searching; in stand-your-ground jurisdictions, the absence of safe means to avert harm may be less dispositive as a formal requirement. Historical cases on this term are predominantly from common law self-defense jurisdictions and may not map cleanly onto modern statutory frameworks.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Self-Defense (for the doctrinal framework in which "avert" functions as a standard); Necessity (for the parallel usage in justification doctrine).