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incubate

Pronunciation: /ˈɪŋkjʊbeɪt/

The English word “incubate” has 3 meanings listed here.

verb

  1. To brood, raise, or maintain eggs, organisms, or living tissue through the provision of ideal environmental conditions.
  2. To incubate metaphorically; to ponder an idea slowly and deliberately as if in preparation for hatching it.

noun

  1. A preparation, or material, that has been incubated.

Etymology

First attested in 1641; borrowed from Latin incubātus, an alternative to incubitus, perfect passive participle of incubō (“to hatch”) (see -ate (verb-forming suffix) and -ate (adjective-forming suffix)), from in- (“in”) + cubō (“to lie”).

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.