Word of the Day: May 3, 2009 ~ inevitable
Sunday, May 3, 2009 at 9:17AM
Jinxi Boo in Etymology, Latin, Word of the Day, etymology, inevitable, word, word origin, words

inevitable (in-ev-i-tuh-buhl) - adjective

Inevitable means "impossible to avoid or prevent; certain."

First used in the written form around 1430. From the Latin ēvitāre meaning "avoid." It was a compound verb formed from the prefix ex- 'away, from' and vitāre 'shun,' and actually produced an English verb evite, meaning "avoid," a scholarly 16th-century introduction which survived as an archaism into the 19th century. Its derived adjective was ēvitābilis, meaning "avoidable," which with the negative prefix became inēvītābilis.

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