inevitable

1. 1
   adjective

   Impossible to avoid or prevent, no matter what actions are taken.

   Once the company lost its biggest client, layoffs were inevitable.

   Historians still debate whether the war was truly inevitable.

   Similarunavoidable, inescapable, certain, inexorable, assured

   Oppositeavoidable, preventable, uncertain

   Note

   The Latin parts spell out the meaning: in- 'not', ē- 'out' and vītāre 'to shun', so it describes something that cannot be shunned or sidestepped. It fits naturally in the frame it was inevitable that…, followed by a clause. Careful writers treat it as absolute, because an outcome either can be avoided or it cannot. For that reason, phrases like more inevitable or very inevitable sound loose.

2. 2
   adjective

   So predictable or routine that it can always be counted on to happen.

   The keynote ended with the speaker's inevitable plug for his new book.

   Monday mornings bring the inevitable backlog of unanswered emails.

   Similarpredictable, usual, customary, habitual, familiar

   Oppositeunexpected, surprising, unusual

   Note

   Here the necessity comes from habit rather than force: the thing arrives because it always does. Unlike the 'unavoidable' meaning, it nearly always sits before its noun, usually after the, as in the inevitable punishment or the inevitable plug, and the tone is often wry. Willa Cather's The Bohemian Girl (1912) stretches it toward 'fitting, as if meant to be'. There, a horse and rider seem to be not an accident but an inevitable detail of the scene.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   An outcome or event that is predictable, necessary, or impossible to avoid.

   The team delayed announcing the layoffs, but everyone knew they were only postponing the inevitable.

   Rather than fight the inevitable, the shop's owner planned an orderly retirement sale.

   Note

   The adjective turned into a noun is most at home with the. People accept, face, delay or bow to the inevitable, and postponing the inevitable is a stock phrase. It can also count things and take a plural. Murray Whyte wrote in 2009 of 'two inevitables' in the life of a city's art scenes, a use that names particular outcomes rather than fate in general.

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