ineluctable

Huh? Are you scratching your head at this word? The ineluctable conclusion is that you haven’t the faintest idea what it means. Ineluctable means impossible to avoid.

A five syllable beauty like ineluctable is obviously not the kind of word you throw around in daily speech. It’s far more often used as a written word, as in the common phrase “ineluctable conclusion.” Used interchangeably with the more common unavoidable, though ineluctable implies an unsuccessful attempt to battle against whatever is ineluctable: after all, it comes from the Latin word “to struggle.”