incubate
pronunciation
How to pronounce incubate in British English:
UK [ˈɪŋkjubeɪt]
How to pronounce incubate in American English:
US [ˈɪnkjəˌbet, ˈɪŋ-]
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- Verb:
- develop under favorable conditions, such as germs and bacteria
- sit on (eggs)
Word Origin
- incubate
- incubate: [18] Latin incubāre, the source of English incubate, meant literally ‘lie down on’. It was based on the verb cubāre ‘lie’, which also produced English concubine and cubicle. The notion of ‘lying on eggs to hatch them’ seems later to have fed back into the simple verb cubāre, which in this sense gave English couvade ‘male mimicking of child-bearing’ [19] (an anthropological term borrowed from French) and covey [14].Another English descendant of incubāre is incubus ‘male demon that has sex with a sleeping woman’ [14], literally ‘one who lies down on another’ (its counterpart is the succubus ‘female demon that has sex with a sleeping man’ [16], literally ‘one who lies down under another’). The nasalized version of the stem of Latin cubāre gave English incumbent [16] (which etymologically means ‘resting upon as a duty’) and recumbent [17].=> cubicle, concubine, covey, incubus, incumbent, recumbent, succubus, succumb
- incubate (v.)
- 1640s, "to brood upon, watch jealously" (which also was a figurative sense of Latin incubare); 1721 as "to sit on eggs to hatch them," from Latin incubatus, past participle of incubare "to lie in or upon" (see incubation). Related: Incubated; incubating.
Example
- 1. King penguins incubate their single egg .
- 2. King penguins incubate their single egg on the feet .
- 3. Physiologically ready to incubate eggs .
- 4. As part of its outreach to budding entrepreneurs in china , innovation works is running a jumpstart program to incubate 10-15 teams for three months .
- 5. The penguins in the huddles were all males , each balancing an egg on their feet as they endured two months of fasting in the antarctic winter to incubate their eggs .