vitantur

Vitantur is a Latin verb form, specifically the present passive indicative, third-person plural, of the verb vitare, meaning to avoid or shun. The active counterpart is vitant, “they avoid.” As a passive form, vitantur translates as “they are avoided” or “they are shunned,” indicating that the subject is the recipient of avoidance by an agent.

In usage, vitantur appears in classical Latin to describe people or things that are avoided by others. The agent of the avoidance is typically expressed by a prepositional phrase with a or ab, such as ab amicis “by friends” or a hostibus “by the enemies.” For example, a sentence might read: Hostes ab amicis vitantur, meaning “The enemies are avoided by the friends.” The form can also appear without an explicit agent, depending on context.

Taxonomic notes: vitare belongs to the first conjugation, and vitantur demonstrates standard passive morphology for this conjugation in the present tense. In dictionaries, vitantur is treated as the finite passive form of vitare, rather than a separate lexical item. The word serves mainly in literary or scholarly Latin to convey social or strategic avoidance, reputation, or ostracism within a narrative or argument.