Word of the Day Archive
Tuesday October 26, 1999
inchoate \in-KOH-it\
, adjective:
1. In an initial or early stage; just begun.
2. Imperfectly formed or formulated.
Mildred Spock believed that, at about the age of three, her children's inchoate wills were to be shaped like vines sprouting up a beanpole.
-- Thomas Maier, Dr. Spock: An American Life
She also had a vision, not yet articulated, an inchoate sense of some special calling that awaited her.
-- Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature
You take on a project because of the feeling, perhaps inchoate, that it may in some way contribute to your deeper understanding of the larger-scale research program you have chosen as your life's work.
-- Christopher Scholz, Fieldwork: A Geologist's Memoir of the Kalahari
Inchoate comes from the past participle of Latin inchoare, alteration of incohare, "to begin."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for inchoate
