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incipient

UK/ɪnˈsɪp.i.ənt/US/ɪnˈsɪp.i.ənt/
adjectiveC2Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #14,186 of 15,258leans written

Incipient means in the earliest stage and beginning to appear. An incipient crisis, incipient panic, incipient signs.

It marks something detectable but not yet developed, which is why it belongs to medicine and to warnings. It is a relative of inception and of incipit, the opening words of a manuscript.

Definitions of incipient

  1. 1adjectiveincipientIn the earliest stage and beginning to appear.C2

    “The doctor noticed signs of incipient heart disease and told him to change his diet.”

incipient is a quality.

Where it comes from

Latin incipiens comes from incipere, to begin, from in plus capere, to take.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *keh₂p-

  2. Latin

    incipiēns

  3. English, today

    incipient

Built from

  • incipiō · Latin — begin

Borrowed from Latin incipiēns, present participle of incipiō (“begin”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

incipient in the wild

  • The Walker Lane may represent an incipient major transform fault zone which could replace the San Andreas as the plate boundary in the future.

    Walker Lane

  • The GCRZ is an incipient rift zone akin to the Red Sea Rift.

    Gulf of California Rift Zone

  • Guinea-Bissau Sign Language is an incipient sign language evolving from the single school for the deaf in Guinea-Bissau, which was founded in Bissau in 2003.

    Guinea-Bissau Sign Language

  • Cyprus or Cypriot Sign Language is an incipient sign language of Cyprus.

    Cypriot Sign Language

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the incipiō family

inceptionincipient

incipient — used about once every 41,009 pages · #14,186 · point at the bar for the others