ineluctable

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The metaphysical question of necessity and freewill acquired a new interest: is Progress a fatality, independent of human purposes, determined by general, ineluctable, historical laws?

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Definitions (4)

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  1. adjective 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).

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Examples (50)

  • The word "ineluctable," meaning "not to be avoided or escaped; inevitable," appears on page 896 of the American Heritage Dictionary (AHD) along with 55 other words, most of them adjectives.
  • But this time, on his return from his vacation, retirement was no longer a vague or distant prospect; it was a logical conclusion, ineluctable, practically immediate. —  Maigret in Court - Georges Simenon - 83 - 1960
  • Thatcher presented the ruling class case as the ineluctable logic of economic necessity. —  In Defence of Marxism
  • "You say an increase in the price of oil is 'ineluctable,'" we questioned the French MoneyWeek team. —  The Daily Reckoning Australia
  • It seemed fashioned out of certain ineluctable, mysterious experiences that had budded, ineffably sad and sweet, from out our lives, and had made us new, and set us apart, and that now, at the music's breath, at a half-whispered note, at the unclosing of a rhythm, the flowering of a cluster of tones out of the warm still darkness, were arisen again in the fullness of their stature and become ours entirely For Debussy is of all musicians the one amongst us most fully. —  Musical Portraits Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers
 

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Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Latin inēluctābilis : in-, not; see in-1 + ēluctābilis, penetrable (from ēluctārī, to struggle out of : ex-, ex- + luctārī, to struggle).

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  1. = French inéluctable = Portuguese ineluctavel = Italian ineluttabile, from Latin ineluctabilis, from in- privative + eluctabilis, that may be escaped from, from eluctari, struggle out: see eluctate.
 

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/ɪnəˈləktəbl/
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