Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Irrevocable \Ir*rev"o*ca*ble\, a. [L. irrevocabilis: cf. F. irr['e]vocable. See In- not, and Revoke, and cf. Irrevocable.] Incapable of being recalled or revoked; unchangeable; irreversible; unalterable; as, an irrevocable promise or decree; irrevocable fate.
Firm and irrevocable is my doom.
--Shak.
-- Ir*rev"o*ca*ble*ness, n. -- Ir*rev"o*ca*bly, adv.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
a. Unable to be retracted or reversed; final.
WordNet
adj. impossible to retract or revoke; "firm and irrevocable is my doom"- Shakespeare [syn: irrevokable] [ant: revocable]
Usage examples of "irrevocable".
Irrevocable abysses of time and space separated him forever from the one woman he had ever loved.
We think no longer of submission to the irrevocable decrees of absolute dominion, but of participation in an adventure on behalf of a power that gains strength and establishes itself.
But perhaps I did well not to tie myself down with irrevocable bonds, though now my independence is another name for slavery.
She felt if she untensed her body something irrevocable, something irrevocable and lunatic, something irrevocable, totally mad, would happen.
But I give my free and hearty consent, providing the settlements are drawn in such an irrevocable form as may secure my child from suffering by that state of dependence, and that sudden and causeless revocation of allowances, of which I have so much reason to complain.
The resolution was all the more irrevocable because I fancied some old peasant might have witnessed all my tricks in the middle of the magic ring, in which case the most Holy, or, if you like, the most infernal, Inquisition, receiving information from him, might very well have caught me and enhanced my fame by some splendid 'auto-da-fe' in which I had not the slightest wish to be the principal actor.
Because this was it: an interval, a space, in which the toad-squatting guns, the panting men and the trembling horses paused, amphitheatric about the embattled land, beneath the fading fury of the smoke and the puny yelling, and permitted the sorry business which had dragged on for three years now to be congealed into an irrevocable instant and put to an irrevocable gambit, not by two regiments or two batteries or even two generals, but by two locomotives.
All these old sober Boston blue-collar men's irrevocable tattoos fading almost observably under the low-budget fluorescence of church basements and hospital auditoria Ewell watched and charted and cross-referenced them, moved.
The assurance of a complete and irrevocable break with everything which beclouds the past lies in a true and courageous comprehension of its full consequences.
The act is countersigned by the Chief, and you know that an act countersigned by the Chief is absolutely irrevocable.
The document authorizing the Last Trump was countersigned by the Chief, and you know that it is irrevocable for that reason.
Henner's estate, the bulk of which, excluding a few behests and excluding these grounds now the irrevocable property of the North American Center for Parapsychic Talents, is to go into a Trust Fund, providing legal assistance to anyone registered with the Center who may be imprisoned or charged with damages or lawsuits following the professional use of their Talent, until such time as specific laws are promulgated to give the Talents professional immunity.
The Indescribable Force 's irrevocable dictums can then be apprehended by seers, properly interpreted by them, and accumulated in the form of a governing body.
She went to sleep, comforted by the irrevocable advantage of privacy available to a member of the Heptite Guild.
To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose, not to speak of particular amendments, so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.