To circumvent something means to find a way around it, especially a rule, obstacle, or problem that stands in your way.

When a driver circumvents heavy traffic by taking back roads, they're avoiding the obstacle by going around it. A business might try to circumvent safety regulations by finding loopholes in the law.

The word often carries a slightly sneaky feeling. While it's not always wrong to circumvent something (circumventing a traffic jam is perfectly fine), the word frequently describes avoiding rules or restrictions in ways that might be clever but aren't quite honest.

You might also hear people talk about circumventing problems or difficulties, which simply means finding creative solutions: “The engineer circumvented the design problem by approaching it from a completely different angle.”