ineluctable

From Middle French inéluctable, from Latin inēluctābilis, from in- + ēluctor (“struggle out”) + -bilis.

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /ɪn.ɪˈlʌk.tə.bəl/

• Audio (US)

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ineluctable (comparative more ineluctable, superlative most ineluctable)

1. Impossible to avoid or escape; inescapable, irresistible.
   • 1655, Thomas Pierce, A Correct Copy of Some Notes concerning Gods Decrees, "A Paraenesis to the Reader," chapter 4, item 50:

     God indeed (if it please him) can by his absolute power over his Creature, make him act this thing, or take that thing, by ineluctable Necessity, and whether he will or no.

   • 1797, Alexander Shiels, A Hind Let Loose, Calton (Glasgow), page 541:

     They have come under the yoke of ineluctable slavery.

   • 1894, Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne, The Ebb-Tide, chapter 10:

     He was aware instantly of an opposition in his members, unanimous and invincible, clinging to life with a single and fixed resolve, finger by finger, sinew by sinew; something that was at once he and not he—at once within and without him;—the shutting of some miniature valve in his brain, which a single manly thought should suffice to open—and the grasp of an external fate ineluctable as gravity.

   • 1922, James Joyce, Ulysses, Episode 3—Proteus:

     I throw this ended shadow from me, manshape ineluctable, call it back.

   • 1973, Harry Mudd, Mudd's Passion (Star Trek: The Animated Series episode 10)

     Captain Kirk! And the ineluctible Mr. Spock. Welcome to Motherlode, gentlemen. Interested in purchasing a little love?

   • 1993, Will Self, My Idea of Fun:

     Out in the street, under the reddening afternoon sun, a spectacle of ineluctable commerce greeted her.

   • 2007 July 7, Marina Hyde, "The artists formerly known as huge carbon footprints," Guardian Unlimited (UK):

     The first will be the ineluctable fact of climate change.

• ineluctably

• ineluctable in An American Dictionary of the English Language, by Noah Webster, 1828.
• ineluctable in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• “ineluctable” in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.
• Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., 1989.

ineluctable (plural ineluctables)

1. ineluctable