Inchoate
adj, noun, verb ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A beginning, an immature start. rare
- 1 To begin or start (something). transitive
- 2 To cause or bring about. In the field of criminology, to encourage, assist, conspire, aid and abet, incite, etc. transitive
- 3 To make a start. intransitive
- 1 Recently started but not fully formed yet; just begun; only elementary or immature.
"neither a substance perfect, nor a substance inchoate"
- 2 Chaotic, disordered, confused; also, incoherent, rambling.
"The Met's chairman, Sir Edward Watkin, was also chairman of that company [the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway], which duplicated other railways' routes in an inchoate way between Manchester and Grimsby, and generally stumbled about the north."
- 3 Of a crime, imposing criminal liability for an incompleted act.
"Congress considers the inchoate offenses of attempt and conspiracy, even conspiracy without an overt act, to be just as serious as the federal substantive drug offenses which they contemplate."
- 1 only partly in existence; imperfectly formed wordnet
Example
More examples"An attempt to commit a crime is considered an inchoate offense that can itself be punished."
Etymology
The adjective is first attested in 1534, the verb circa 1631; borrowed from Latin incohātus (“begun, unfinished”), perfect passive participle of incohō (“to begin”), see -ate (etymology 1, 2 and 3). Cognate with Spanish incoar (“to initiate, commence, begin”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.