Unavoidable

How to spell unavoidable

11 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce unavoidable

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does unavoidable mean?

1. adjectiveImpossible to prevent, escape, or keep away from.

Unavoidable in a sentence

• The delay was unavoidable because of the snow on the runway.

• Some friction between the two teams seemed unavoidable during the merger.

Where does unavoidable come from?

Language of origin: French

The core of this word is 'avoid', which English took in the 1300s from the Anglo-French and Old French verb 'avoider' or 'evuidier', meaning literally 'to empty out' or 'to clear away'; that in turn rests on the Old French root 'vuide', meaning 'empty', the ancestor of modern 'void'. In its earliest English use 'avoid' meant to empty or to make void, as in driving people out of a place, and only later softened to the familiar sense of keeping clear of something or shunning it. The negative prefix 'un-', a thoroughly native Germanic element meaning 'not', was attached along with the Latin-derived suffix '-able', meaning 'capable of being', to form an adjective describing something that cannot be kept clear of or escaped. The spelling trap lives in the seam between the prefix and the stem: the single 'n' of 'un-' meets the 'a' of 'avoid', so there is no doubled letter, and the silent-feeling middle vowels of 'a-void-a-ble' tempt writers to drop or swap letters. Remembering that the word is simply 'un' plus 'avoid' plus 'able' keeps each piece intact.

How the word is built

• un- (not)
• avoid (from Old French evuider: to empty, clear out)
• -able (capable of being)