Definition of INELUCTABLY

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Like drama, wrestling was popular in ancient Greece and Rome. "Wrestler," in Latin, is "luctator," and "to wrestle" is "luctari." "Luctari" also has extended senses - "to struggle," "to strive," or "to contend." "Eluctari" joined "e-" ("ex-") with "luctari," forming a verb meaning "to struggle clear of." "Ineluctabilis" brought in the negative prefix in- to form an adjective describing something that cannot be escaped or avoided. English speakers borrowed the word as "ineluctable" around 1623. Another word that has its roots in "luctari" is "reluctant." Reluctari means "to struggle against" - and someone who is "reluctant" resists or holds back.

Examples of ineluctable in a Sentence

the ineluctable approach of winter had many worried about the cost of heating their homes

Recent Examples on the Web In its prickliness and insistence on the messiness and ineluctable pain of life, this is very different from the pandering, gold-grubbing titles that tend to hit theaters starting around now. — Manohla Dargis, New York Times, "Around the Movie World in 17 Days at the New York Film Festival," 26 Sep. 2019 There is little doubt that our intelligence and our experiences are ineluctable consequences of the natural causal powers of our brain, rather than any supernatural ones. — Christof Koch, Scientific American, "Will Machines Ever Become Conscious?," 1 Dec. 2019 For everything that has a beginning has an end, an ineluctable consequence of the second law of thermodynamics. — Christof Koch, Scientific American, "Is Death Reversible?," 11 Oct. 2019 Still, one visual element of this erratic opening night had ineluctable power. — Peter Marks, Washington Post, "The opening night of Campaign 2020 kind of laid an egg," 27 June 2019 One hundred–plus years of wildland fire suppression and an ever hotter planet make this an ineluctable truth in the American West. — Marc Peruzzi, Outside Online, "Wildfire Smoke Is Here to Stay," 5 June 2019 Democracies are also prone to disorder and corruption, but these are ineluctable features of any political system comprised of selfish and flawed human beings. — Sean Illing, Vox, "Intellectuals have said democracy is failing for a century. They were wrong.," 20 Dec. 2018 But there remains the ineluctable sense that something is badly, mysteriously wrong—if nothing else, because neither Kawhi nor the Spurs organization seems to need, or want, to clear things up. — Nathaniel Friedman, GQ, "The Silence Around Kawhi Leonard Used to Be Comforting," 18 Apr. 2018 Selection bias might partially explain the high incidence, but head injuries are an ineluctable part of football, and neurologists are continuing to learn more about the relationship between football and CTE. — Theodore Kupfer, National Review, "Will Football Survive?," 14 Dec. 2017

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'ineluctable.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

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Last Updated

8 Jan 2020

Cite this Entry

“Ineluctable.” The Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster Inc., https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ineluctably. Accessed 17 January 2020.