INEVITABLE

Pronunciation (US):

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IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does inevitable mean? 

• INEVITABLE (noun)
  The noun INEVITABLE has 1 sense:

1. an unavoidable event

  Familiarity information: INEVITABLE used as a noun is very rare.

• INEVITABLE (adjective)
  The adjective INEVITABLE has 2 senses:

1. incapable of being avoided or prevented

2. invariably occurring or appearing

  Familiarity information: INEVITABLE used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• INEVITABLE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

An unavoidable event

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural events

Context example:

don't argue with the inevitable

Hypernyms ("inevitable" is a kind of...):

destiny; fate (an event (or a course of events) that will inevitably happen in the future)

• INEVITABLE (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Incapable of being avoided or prevented

Context example:

the inevitable result

Similar:

fatal; fateful (controlled or decreed by fate; predetermined)

ineluctable; inescapable; unavoidable (impossible to avoid or evade)

necessary (unavoidably determined by prior circumstances)

Antonym:

evitable (capable of being avoided or warded off)

Derivation:

inevitability; inevitableness (the quality of being unavoidable)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Invariably occurring or appearing

Context example:

the inevitable changes of the seasons

Similar:

predictable (capable of being foretold)

Derivation:

inevitability; inevitableness (the quality of being unavoidable)

 Context examples 

That White Fang should quickly gain this post was inevitable.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

She did it with wretched feelings, but it was inevitable.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

It was inevitable that the clash for leadership should come.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

Because the nut intake was self-reported, errors are inevitable, and there was not data on how the nuts were prepared, so the influence of preparation methods was not able to be tested.

(Eating Regular Variety of Nuts Associated with Lower Risk of Heart Disease, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

While the individual simulations of the model differed on the timing, the research suggests that changes may be inevitable in large regions of the Southern Ocean, regardless of future mitigation efforts.

(Marine organisms in Southern Ocean will face shallower zone for life, National Science Foundation)

‘That is not danger,’ said he. ‘It is inevitable destruction.’

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

As to his going, it was inevitable.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

I had put them at a distance, and accepted my inevitable place.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

But suspicion of something unpleasant is the inevitable consequence of such an alteration as we just witnessed in him.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

The gold-seeking tide was flooding northward into Alaska, and it was inevitable that Hans Nelson and his wife should he caught up by the stream and swept toward the Klondike.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)