"By displaying a light the skipper avoided a collision." To avoid is to shun; the skipper could have avoided a collision only by getting out of the way.
Mere slang.
"Back of law is force."
"I feel badly." "He looks badly." The former sentence implies defective nerves of sensation, the latter, imperfect vision. Use the adjective.
"The balance of my time is given to recreation." In this sense balance is a commercial word, and relates to accounting.
A good enough word in its place, but its place is the dictionary. Say, dinner.
"Bar sinister." There is no such thing in heraldry as a bar sinister.
"I knew it was night, because it was dark." "He will not go, because he is ill."
The verb to bet forms its preterite regularly, as do wet, wed, knit, quit and others that are commonly misconjugated. It seems that we clip our short words more than we do our long.
"The body lay here, the head there." The body is the entire physical person (as distinguished from the soul, or mind) and the head is a part of it. As distinguished from head, trunk may include the limbs, but anatomically it is the torso only.
The word is slang; keep it out.