避く

From Old Japanese.

Cognate with 離く, 放く (saku, “to separate things, to put a space between things”),[1][2] in turn cognate with 割く, 裂く (saku, “to split, to tear apart”, both transitive and intransitive), and 咲く (saku, “to bloom”).

The sense appears to have developed as to put a space between things → to keep at a distance → to avoid.

This saku form is the classical form of modern 避ける (sakeru).

• Kun’yomi
  • IPA^(key): [sa̠kɯ̟ᵝ]

避く (transitive, shimo nidan conjugation, hiragana さく, rōmaji saku)

1. to avoid, to dodge

From Old Japanese. Appears in the Man'yōshū, completed some time after 759 CE.

Cognate with 横 (yoko, “side; sideways; to the side”).[2]

The sense appears to have developed as to step or pull to one side → to avoid, or to exclude by pushing off to the side.

This yoku form is the classical form of modern 避ける (yokeru).

• Kun’yomi
  • IPA^(key): [jo̞kɯ̟ᵝ]

避く (transitive, shimo nidan conjugation, hiragana よく, rōmaji yoku)

1. to avoid, to dodge
2. to preemptively avoid something: to prevent
3. to push to the side, to exclude

This verb has exhibited three classical conjugation patterns in historical texts: 上二段活用 (kami nidan katsuyō, “upper bigrade conjugation”) where the verb stem ends in either -u or -i, 四段活用 (yodan katsuyō, “quadrigrade conjugation”) where the verb stem ends in -u, -a, -i, or -e, and 下二段活用 (shimo nidan katsuyō, “lower bigrade conjugation”) where the verb stem ends in either -u or -e. The shimo pattern arose in the Kamakura period or Muromachi period,[2] later displacing the other two patterns to become the main form used in classical or literary Japanese.[1][2][3]