INCHOATE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does inchoate mean? 

• INCHOATE (adjective)
  The adjective INCHOATE has 1 sense:

1. only partly in existence; imperfectly formed

  Familiarity information: INCHOATE used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• INCHOATE (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Only partly in existence; imperfectly formed

Synonyms:

inchoate; incipient

Context example:

a vague inchoate idea

Similar:

early (being or occurring at an early stage of development)

 Context examples 

In the deep shadow of the tree there was a deeper shadow yet, black, inchoate, vague—a crouching form full of savage vigor and menace.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It was about studies and lessons, dealing with the rudiments of knowledge, and the schoolboyish tone of it conflicted with the big things that were stirring in him—with the grip upon life that was even then crooking his fingers like eagle's talons, with the cosmic thrills that made him ache, and with the inchoate consciousness of mastery of it all.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

His thin lips, like the dies of a machine, stamped out phrases that cut and stung; or again, pursing caressingly about the inchoate sound they articulated, the thin lips shaped soft and velvety things, mellow phrases of glow and glory, of haunting beauty, reverberant of the mystery and inscrutableness of life; and yet again the thin lips were like a bugle, from which rang the crash and tumult of cosmic strife, phrases that sounded clear as silver, that were luminous as starry spaces, that epitomized the final word of science and yet said something more—the poet's word, the transcendental truth, elusive and without words which could express, and which none the less found expression in the subtle and all but ungraspable connotations of common words.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)