INCARNATE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does incarnate mean? 

• INCARNATE (adjective)
  The adjective INCARNATE has 2 senses:

1. possessing or existing in bodily form

2. invested with a bodily form especially of a human body

  Familiarity information: INCARNATE used as an adjective is rare.

• INCARNATE (verb)
  The verb INCARNATE has 2 senses:

1. make concrete and real

2. represent in bodily form

  Familiarity information: INCARNATE used as a verb is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• INCARNATE (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Possessing or existing in bodily form

Synonyms:

bodied; corporal; corporate; embodied; incarnate

Context example:

'corporate' is an archaic term

Similar:

corporeal; material (having material or physical form or substance)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Invested with a bodily form especially of a human body

Context example:

a monarch...regarded as a god incarnate

Similar:

bodied (having a body or a body of a specified kind; often used in combination)

• INCARNATE (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they incarnate    ... he / she / it incarnates   
Past simple: incarnated   
Past participle: incarnated   
-ing form: incarnating   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Make concrete and real

Classified under:

Verbs of sewing, baking, painting, performing

Hypernyms (to "incarnate" is one way to...):

actualise; actualize; realise; realize; substantiate (make real or concrete; give reality or substance to)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Something ----s something

Antonym:

disincarnate (make immaterial; remove the real essence of)

Derivation:

incarnation (a new personification of a familiar idea)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Represent in bodily form

Classified under:

Verbs of being, having, spatial relations

Synonyms:

body forth; embody; incarnate; substantiate

Context example:

The painting substantiates the feelings of the artist

Hypernyms (to "incarnate" is one way to...):

be (have the quality of being; (copula, used with an adjective or a predicate noun))

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Something ----s something

Derivation:

incarnation (a new personification of a familiar idea)

 Context examples 

There must be no chances, this time; we shall, not rest until the Count's head and body have been separated, and we are sure that he cannot re-incarnate.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

You didn’t know this dead man, McCarthy. He was a devil incarnate. I tell you that.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It was living philosophy, with warm, red blood, incarnated in these two men till its very features worked with excitement.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

And truly Buck was the Fiend incarnate, raging at their heels and dragging them down like deer as they raced through the trees.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

He is such an incarnate hypocrite, that whatever object he pursues, he must pursue crookedly.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

What crime was this that lived incarnate in this sequestered mansion, and could neither be expelled nor subdued by the owner? —what mystery, that broke out now in fire and now in blood, at the deadest hours of night?

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

I had a theoretical reverence and homage for beauty, elegance, gallantry, fascination; but had I met those qualities incarnate in masculine shape, I should have known instinctively that they neither had nor could have sympathy with anything in me, and should have shunned them as one would fire, lightning, or anything else that is bright but antipathetic.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

In spite of their Unitarian proclivities and their masks of conservative broadmindedness, they were two generations behind interpretative science: their mental processes were mediaeval, while their thinking on the ultimate data of existence and of the universe struck him as the same metaphysical method that was as young as the youngest race, as old as the cave-man, and older—the same that moved the first Pleistocene ape-man to fear the dark; that moved the first hasty Hebrew savage to incarnate Eve from Adam's rib; that moved Descartes to build an idealistic system of the universe out of the projections of his own puny ego; and that moved the famous British ecclesiastic to denounce evolution in satire so scathing as to win immediate applause and leave his name a notorious scrawl on the page of history.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)