Word of the Day

Monday September 14, 2009

incipient [in-SIP-ee-uhnt]

adjective

Beginning to develop, or to appear; as, the incipient stage of a fever; the incipient light of day.

Paul Walker, with his two-day bristle of a beard and touch-too-tan complexion, has the incipient, leathery look of one of those matinee idols who will look about two decades older when he turns 45.

Donald Munro, "Fourth time definitely no charm for 'Fast & Furious'", The Fresno Bee, Apr 3, 2009
Perhaps, as Louis Sass has suggested, van Gogh's work still feels like art of our moment because the tremors of incipient breakdown pervade modern culture, as well as our private selves.

Kenneth Baker, "Opportunity knocks at top fine art fair", San Francisco Chronicle, Mar 29, 2009
For instance, the morning after her dismissal of Tracy, Hawkins and Sellers read in the associated press dispatches that a toy puzzle called Pigs in the Clover, had come into sudden favor within the past few weeks, and that from the Atlantic to the Pacific all the populations of all the States had knocked off work to play with it, and that the business of the country had now come to a standstill by consequence; that judges, lawyers, burglars, parsons, thieves, merchants, mechanics, murderers, women, children, babies--everybody, indeed, could be seen from morning till midnight, absorbed in one deep project and purpose, and only one--to pen those pigs, work out that puzzle successfully; that all gayety, all cheerfulness had departed from the nation, and in its place care, preoccupation and anxiety sat upon every countenance, and all faces were drawn, distressed, and furrowed with the signs of age and trouble, and marked with the still sadder signs of mental decay and incipient madness; that factories were at work night and day in eight cities, and yet to supply the demand for the puzzle was thus far impossible.

Mark Twain (1835-1910) An American author and humorist. The American Claimant (1891)

Origin of the Word

Incipient, approximately 1669, derived from Latin incipientem, past participle of incipere "begin, take up," from in- "on" + -cipere, comb. form of capere "to take".