Posters on Reddit are reporting that CIRCUMVENT just appeared on their School Days SAT. Unfortunately, we don’t know if CIRCUMVENT was a correct or an incorrect answer. But fortunately, CIRCUMVENT is an easy word to define and illustrate.
The prefix CIRCUM means “around.” If signals that CIRCUMVENT will describe an action intended to go around or evade a rule or procedure. For example, the Fifteenth Amendment prohibited states from denying black males the right to vote because of ‘race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Following Reconstruction, the Southern states used poll taxes, property qualifications, and the infamous grandfather clause to CIRCUMVENT the Fifteenth Amendment.
College Board test writers know that students often confuse CIRCUMVENT and CORROBORATE. The two words have very different meanings. CIRCUMVENT means to deliberately evade a rule or procedure. In contrast, CORROBORATE means to confirm or support a statement or reading.
CIRCUMVENT – to cleverly go around or bypass a rule; evade