inescapable
Americanadjective
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of inescapable
First recorded in 1785–95; in- 3 + escapable ( def. )
Explanation
Something that's inescapable is impossible to get away from. A reluctant swimmer may stop trying to talk his mom out of making him go to swimming lessons once he realizes that learning to swim is inescapable. Any force or occurrence or duty that you just can't avoid is inescapable. Feeling angry at people you love sometimes is inescapable, and children growing older is also inescapable. The adjective combines the prefix in, or "not, the opposite of," with escapable, which comes from the Vulgar Latin word excappare, literally "get out of one's cape," or "leave a pursuer holding just one's cape."
Vocabulary lists containing inescapable
The Honest Truth
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Winger
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"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" by Wallace Stevens
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The geographer Paul Starrs writes about the photograph in his essay “An Inescapable Range, or the Ranch as Everywhere.”
From New York Times • Jan. 18, 2018
Inescapable is the disparity between the flag's scale, which dwarfs anyone in its vicinity, and the trifle implied by a trinket.
From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 24, 2015
Crowds gathered around Mr. Hirst’s “The Inescapable Truth” — a white dove suspended prettily in sky-blue liquid over a human skull — and marvelled at how, reportedly, Elton John had one just like it.
From New York Times • Jun. 1, 2010
Last week three notorious U. S. kidnapping cases, varying in age from one to four years, were still knocking about the nation's courts in the following fashions: "Inescapable Evidence."
From Time Magazine Archive
Inescapable, in-es-kā′pa-bl, adj. not to be escaped: inevitable.
From Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (part 2 of 4: E-M) by Various
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
