How to make emacs not load something in its path?

[Harry Putnam]

This may be a common thing but it never crossed my pea brain before.

How would I stop emacs from loading something in its path?

For example: If I wanted to have one emacs version load ~/.emacs and a
different version NOT load it.

Or would it just be better to remove ~/.emacs and have each version
load its own ~/.emacs-24, or ~/.emacs-25