Adjective

(en adjective)

Impossible to avoid or escape; inescapable, irresistible.

* 1655 , Thomas Pierce, A Correct Copy of Some Notes concerning Gods Decrees , "A Paraenesis to the Reader," chapter 4, item 50:

God indeed (if it please him) can by his absolute power over his Creature, make him act this thing, or take that thing, by ineluctable Necessity, and whether he will or no.

* 1797 , Alexander Shiels, A Hind Let Loose , Calton (Glasgow), page 541:

They have come under the yoke of ineluctable slavery.

* 1894 , , The Ebb-Tide , chapter 10:

He was aware instantly of an opposition in his members, unanimous and invincible, clinging to life with a single and fixed resolve, finger by finger, sinew by sinew; something that was at once he and not he—at once within and without him;—the shutting of some miniature valve in his brain, which a single manly thought should suffice to open—and the grasp of an external fate ineluctable as gravity.

* 1922 , , Ulysses , Episode 3—Proteus:

I throw this ended shadow from me, manshape ineluctable , call it back.

* 1993 , Will Self, My Idea of Fun :

Out in the street, under the reddening afternoon sun, a spectacle of ineluctable commerce greeted her.

* 2007 , Marina Hyde, " The artists formerly known as huge carbon footprints," Guardian Unlimited (UK), 7 July:

The first will be the ineluctable fact of climate change.

Adjective

(en adjective)

Stubbornly persistent, generally in wrongdoing; refusing to reform or repent.

* Hooker

The very custom of evil makes the heart obdurate against whatsoever instructions to the contrary.

* Shakespeare

Art thou obdurate , flinty, hard as steel, / Nay, more than flint, for stone at rain relenteth?

* 1818 , ,"The Revolt of Islam", canto 4, stanza 9, lines 1486-7:

But custom maketh blind and obdurate

The loftiest hearts.

* {{quote-news

, year=2011 , date=February 12 , author=Les Roopanarine , title=Birmingham 1 - 0 Stoke , work=BBC citation , page= , passage=An injury-time goal from Nikola Zigic against an obdurate Stoke side gave Birmingham back-to back Premier League wins for the first time in 14 months.}}

(obsolete) Physically hardened, toughened.