1 Definition
Impossible to avoid, resist, or escape; certain to happen no matter what anyone does.
2 In Use
As the final chapter drew near, the novel's tragic ending felt ineluctable, as though every earlier scene had been quietly leaning toward it.
3 Word Origin
luctari Lat. · to wrestle → ineluctabilis Lat. · not to be escaped → ineluctable 17th c. English
Ineluctable comes straight from Latin, built on the image of a wrestler fighting to break free of a hold. Add a prefix meaning "out" and another meaning "not," and you get something that no amount of struggling can get you out of. English writers borrowed it in the 1600s, and it has stayed a favorite for fate, consequence, and the sense that some outcomes are simply locked in.
💡Fun Fact
Ineluctable has a famous cousin in everyday speech: reluctant, which comes from the same Latin root and originally meant struggling against something. James Joyce gave the word a literary spotlight when he opened the "Proteus" episode of Ulysses with the phrase "Ineluctable modality of the visible," as his character Stephen Dedalus muses on how unavoidably we perceive the world through our eyes. Today you will often meet the word in discussions of fate, history, and science, wherever something seems destined to arrive.