What is a word for trying to avoid contact when you see someone, especially eye contact?

Question

If two people are trying to avoid eye contact with each other, either out of hatred or just out of lack of interest, can we have one word for this situation?

I am not sure if 'dodge' can be used. In any case, I am thinking of another word which I think I heard in Friends TV series. Perhaps I think Chandler and Joey were avoiding Ross, and Ross confronted them, and used a word starting with B, which meant avoiding. Not able to recall that word. So maybe I am also looking for a word where people are avoiding eye contact for a long period of time.

Sentences: 1. When they met in the hallway, they dodged each other, and went about their business. 2. They have been circumventing each other for days now.

I wish dodge or circumvent could be replaced with better verbs here. Something that clearly hints about avoiding eye contact.

Answer 1

You're looking for a single word, right? Avoiding "eye contact" for any reason (shyness, hatred, no interest, contempt) is simply "avoiding eye contact". There is no single word to cover all possibilities.

Answer 2

I came across that FRIENDS episode again, and realised that the word was 'blow off'. Ross was upset that Chandler blew him off. Totally ignored him. Acted as if he wasn't interested in him.

blow sth/sb off-- to treat something or someone as if that thing or person were not important.

Answer 3

A term for ignoring someone intentionally that also starts with a B is blanking someone.

blank [somebody] [transitive] (British English, informal): to ignore somebody completely

• I saw her on the bus this morning, but she totally blanked me.

[OLD]

It has more BrE usage than AmE, so maybe not what was on Friends (Black Books covered it as well). Otherwise suits: You would pretend not to see them, even avert your eyes as if glancing past them or deliberately turn your head away so much that you hurt your neck. It comes down though the word blank as in blanc, white, nothing, giving a blank look when you don't recognize someone.

TFD also gives:

21. slang to ignore or be unresponsive towards (someone): the crowd blanked her for the first four numbers.

Answer 4

I know you were looking for the word used in Friends ("blow off") but I also think it's interesting that the social situation you described, of avoiding eye contact, has also been documented over 200 years ago in the era of Jane Austen (Regency era).

The words they used to describe this snub was the "cut".

1. The "cut direct" is to stare an acquaintance in the face and pretend not to know him.
2. The "cut indirect", to look another way, and pretend not to see him.
3. The "cut sublime", to admire the top of some tall edifice or the clouds of heaven till the person cut has passed by.
4. The "cut infernal", to stoop and adjust your boots till the party has gone past.

https://regrom.com/2012/04/06/regency-customs-the-cut/

Answer 5

The word you're looking for might be "opsablepsia".

The inability to look someone in the eye, or not looking into another person's eyes, while speaking.

_{https://wordinfo.info/unit/302
https://www.encyclo.co.uk/meaning-of-opsablepsia}

Also, the link https://wordinfo.info/unit/302 lists a number of fears, phobias and conditions related to seeing, formed with the Greek word/suffix -blepsia meaning sight.

Answer 6

Not very sure about the Friend's reference, but here's an old one that's close, but not perfect:

orey-eyed - expressing anger through the eyes.

It is akin to 'wild-eyed'. Closest to a single word word I know that expresses what you want it to. Here's a source:

It was new to me too, which added interest to my search. It is quite common online, especially in reference to the Orey-eyed Oghamist, whoever he is. One dictionary site defined it as “expressing anger through the eyes”. An article on horsemanship said that orey-eyed meant the same as wall-eyed, for a an eye with a streaked or opaque white iris.

None of my standard reference works contained it, but I ran it to earth in the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), which says it means “having bleary or wild-looking eyes, especially as a result of drunkenness” and that it could also mean that somebody is drunk or enraged. It has examples going back to a discussion of it by H L Mencken in 1919, though the first appearance that DARE includes from real life is in Chevrons, a war novel by Leonard Nason dated 1926: “‘I know him,’ said Short, ‘he’s the man that brought you home the night you got orey-eyed at Cokeydawn.’” The earliest example I’ve found is in The Post Standard of Syracuse in 1910: “And Harte did a job on the orey-eyed slob that was vivid and livid and nifty.”

Now at last to your question. Nobody knows the answer for certain. Mencken thought it was actually awry-eyed, which is a reasonable guess, but DARE points to the old Scottish term oorie, which is defined in the Concise Scots Dictionary as referring to persons or things that are “dismal, gloomy, miserable-looking, from cold, illness, etc.” If you include drunkenness in that etc., you’re well on the way to the modern American sense.1

Answer 7

To blind-face someone.

Ever since I spoke about his operation, he's been blind-facing me. I guess it was a sensitive subject.

I completely made this up out of necessity.

What do you think?