Word of the Day:

September 22, 2021

inchoate

adjective in-KOH-ut

What it Means

Inchoate means "imperfectly formed or formulated."

// In the podcast, the author described the process by which she took a series of inchoate vignettes and shaped them into her best-selling novel.

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Inchoate in Context

"Petrifying sights and sounds haunt her nights and inchoate shadows hover around her." — Jeannette Catsoulis, The New York Times, 19 Aug. 2021

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Did You Know?

Inchoate comes from inchoare, which means "to start work on" in Latin but translates literally as "to hitch up" (inchoare combines the prefix in- with the Latin noun cohum, which refers to the strap that secures a plow beam to a draft animal's yoke). The concept of this initial step toward the larger task of plowing a field explains how inchoate came to describe something (as a plan or idea) in its early, not fully formed, stages of development.

Quiz

Fill in the blanks to complete a synonym of inchoate: n _ _ c _ nt.

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