Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Not to be avoided or escaped; inevitable: "Those war plans rested on a belief in the ineluctable superiority of the offense over the defense” ( Jack Beatty).
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Not to be overcome or escaped from.
Wiktionary
- adj. Impossible to avoid or escape; inescapable, irresistible.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Not to be overcome by struggling; irresistible; inescapable; inevitable.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. impossible to avoid or evade:
Etymologies
- From Latin inēluctābilis, from in- + ēluctor ("struggle out"). (Wiktionary)
- Latin inēluctābilis : in-, not; see in-1 + ēluctābilis, penetrable (from ēluctārī, to struggle out of : ex-, ex- + luctārī, to struggle). (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“ROME—Italy's business elite Friday demanded rapid and bold action by the government to avoid what they called an "ineluctable slide into economic and social decline.”
The Wall Street Journal: Italian Business Lobby Calls for Action on Economy
“The unhavable experience, which cannot be had; the absolute ineluctable which is ineluctable: how can I talk about it?”
“We could be misled if we considered the rise of the nones simply a symptom of ineluctable secularization.”
“Anyone still doubting the ineluctable stupidity of firebaggers can read the comment @19.”
“Taken as an ineluctable entirety, these units of self-measure are intense, unnerving, and productively bewildering.”
The Huffington Post: Seth Abramson: December 2011 Contemporary Poetry Reviews
“The Chief Judge dissented, noting, "this court's unprecedented decision leads to the ineluctable result of union decertification in order to invoke rights to which players are clearly entitled under the antitrust laws.”
The Huffington Post: David Morris: The Superbowl Is Over -- Now The Real Combat Begins
“Some argue that there should be one and only one priority -- investing in research to discover a cure for Alzheimer's or at least to invent medications to stop the ineluctable decline the disease brings with it.”
“An exploration of love, need, and the ineluctable force of the past, Nocturnes reveals these individuals to us with extraordinary precision and subtlety, and with the arresting psychological and emotional detail that has marked all of Kazuo Ishiguros acclaimed works of fiction.”
Nocturnes: Summary and book reviews of Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro.
“He insists on the ineluctable historical presence of morality in our lives, which leads him to his basic insight: that those who did evil believed that they were doing good.”
“It's as if she's reading Balanchine's foreknowledge of his loss in the ineluctable flow of his choreography.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘ineluctable’.
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LIT - Ulysses - key words and phrases
money cowrie, bedraggle, omphalos, ineluctable, postprandial, bladderwrack, modality barnacle..., loofah, shipworm, cither, embattle, Malachi and 503 more...
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501
Classic
aberration, abstruse, anomaly, assiduous, august, banal, boisterous, dulcet, epitome, impudent, insolent, mellifluous and 401 more...
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GRE Barron's 800
abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abject, abjure, abscission, abscond, abstemious, abstinence, abysmal, accretion and 787 more...
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501
Classic
abhor, mirth, obtuse, iota, vex, irk, teem, pith, moot, mete, ire, bane and 401 more...
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From reading
Collected from reading
venerate, reprobate, reticent, adoration, ethereal, ephemeral, equivocal, contumacious, heinous, solicitous, agnostic, aberration and 335 more...
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501
Classic
irk, teem, blight, pith, moot, mete, ire, bane, bilk, boor, elan, ado and 401 more...
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501
Classic
aberration, abstruse, anomaly, assiduous, august, banal, boisterous, dulcet, epitome, impudent, insolent, mellifluous and 401 more...
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Used
halcyon, ineluctable, inspissated, incarnadine, askance, demur, saltation, requisite, effusive, specious, liminality, indomitable and 114 more...
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Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2046 more...
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phrontistery - i
from phrontistery.info
iamb, ianthine, ibidem, iceblink, ichneumous, ichnite, ichnogram, ichnography, ictus, idolum, idoneous, ilke and 510 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Cool Words
Words I'd like to see enter common usage.
fricatrice, inchoate, imparlance, apothegm, ductile, parley, frisson, quiescent, redolent, insouciance, feckless, caviling and 25 more...
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gre2
aberrant, aberration, aboveboard, abrasive, abstemious, acme, admonish, affable, affluent, alacrity, allegory, alleviate and 1824 more...
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Go over
mollify, obstinate, obviate, occlude, onerous, obscure, paragon, pedantic, perfunctory, placate, placid, prodigal and 364 more...
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GRE Reference
A list of words unfamiliar to me that I have repeatedly encountered in GRE question sets.
parochial, clique, salacious, aegis, ostracize, conceited, sacrilegious, inane, serendipity, gourmand, polemic, tenuous and 138 more...
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Need to Know!
elicit, educe, refute, cogency, churlish, martinet, veritable, polyglot, dissemble, histrionics, prevarication, verbiage and 166 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for ineluctable.
Casey "She stood on a tripod of stiff telescoping metal. her body had been altered for heavy labour, with pistons and pulleys giving her what looked like ineluctable strength." From Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. Sep 22, 2011
john Day after Christmas, 2006, 5:43pm EST: ineluctable is the 100,000th word posted on Wordie. A Joycean word:
"Ineluctable modality of the visible: At least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack , the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro di color che sanno. Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it, it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see." - Ulysses, "Proteus"
and later in the same chapter:
"I throw this ended shadow from me, manshape ineluctable, call it back." Dec 26, 2006