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 joins 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 ineluctabilis as ineluctable. Another word that has its roots in luctari is reluctant. Reluctari means "to struggle against"—and someone who is reluctant resists or holds back.
the ineluctable approach of winter had many worried about the cost of heating their homes
Recent Examples on the WebThe choice of Colescott to represent the United States at the 1997 Venice Biennale initiated a general surrender to his ineluctable power, though most of America’s upper-crust institutions have yet to capitulate. Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker, 18 July 2022 There is an ineluctable emotional stamp on the incipit of just about all of Brahms’ mature chamber works — the opening seconds set an affective tone that can last the entire piece. Lukas Schulze, San Diego Union-Tribune, 26 Aug. 2022 The Communist Party in China, like the Soviet one before it, is just buying time until the eventual ineluctable reckoning with freedom.WSJ, 18 Aug. 2022 Indexes offer the reader multiple ways in and through the text, freeing them from the confines of an ineluctable narrative. Alexandra Horowitz, The Atlantic, 16 Mar. 2022 This alternately playful and lugubrious work of reflection isn’t really about the controversial Italian writer’s life at all, but rather his legacy, and in a less literal yet ineluctable sense, that of film directors Paolo and Vittorio Taviani. Peter Debruge, Variety, 15 Feb. 2022 As the nation with the world’s oldest population, Japan is most vulnerable to the ravages of dementia: memory loss, confusion, slow physical decline and, most heartbreakingly, the ineluctable dissolution of the self and relationships with others.New York Times, 8 Feb. 2022 What emerged was a top-down system that, ever since, has seemed, absurdly, like a natural and ineluctable state of the art. Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 2 Dec. 2021 But for anyone who’s not a weekend-midnights New Beverly habitue or even has only seen one or two, there’s the ineluctable appeal of great pop songs, well-belted — no Easter egg acknowledgement required. Chris Willman, Variety, 25 Sep. 2021 See More
Word History
Etymology
Latin ineluctabilis, from in- + eluctari to struggle clear of, from ex- + luctari to struggle, wrestle; akin to Latin luxus dislocated — more at lock