ineluctable

English

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

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

• Audio (US)

  (file)

Adjective

ineluctable (comparative more ineluctable, superlative most ineluctable)

1. Impossible to avoid or escape; inescapable, irresistible.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:inevitable

   • 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, Lloyd Osbourne, chapter 10, in The Ebb-Tide:

     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 February, James Joyce, “[episode 3]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, , →OCLC:

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

   • 1957 [1944], Karl Polanyi, chapter 10, in The Great Transformation, Beacon Press: Boston, page 127:

     For the self-regulating market was now believed to follow from the inexorable laws of Nature, and the unshackling of the market to be an ineluctable necessity.

   • 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 6, Marina Hyde, “The artists formerly known as huge carbon footprints”, in The Guardian‎:

     […] The first will be the ineluctable fact of climate change.

   • 2022, China Miéville, A Spectre, Haunting: On the Communist Manifesto‎, Head of Zeus, →ISBN:

     As we've seen, the Manifesto’s argument for the ineluctable impoverishment of the working class under capitalism, for example, has not been borne out.

Derived terms

• ineluctably

Related terms

• eluctable
• eluctability
• ineluctability

Translations

References

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

Spanish

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ineluɡˈtable/
• Rhymes: -able
• Syllabification: i‧ne‧luc‧ta‧ble

Adjective

ineluctable m or f (masculine and feminine plural ineluctables)

1. ineluctable

Derived terms

Further reading

• “ineluctable”, in Diccionario de la lengua española, Vigésima tercera edición, Real Academia Española, 2014