Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

CWSA 35

Fragment ID: 8471

Ineffugable

“Infinity imposes itself upon the appearances of the finite by its ineffugable self-existence.”¹

[Note by a correspondent:] “Ineffugable is a new word, like dynamis, introduced into the English language by Sri Aurobindo. It means inescapable, inevitable, not to be avoided. A similar word was used by Blount in 1656 with slight change of form – ineffugible. Etymologically it is an adaptation of the Latin ineffugibilis, from effugere, to flee from, avoid. (Vide, Oxford English Dictionary.)”

Ineffugible is the correct formation, but it has not force or power of suggestive sound in it. The a in ineffugable has been brought in by illegitimate analogy from words like “fugacious”, Latin fugare, because it sounds better and is forcible.

1 October 1943

¹ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, volume 21 of The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo, p. 81.

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