Incubator

/[ˈɪn.kjuːˌbeɪ.ɾɚ]/ noun

noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Any apparatus used to maintain environmental conditions suitable for a reaction.
  2. 2
    apparatus consisting of a box designed to maintain a constant temperature by the use of a thermostat; used for chicks or premature infants wordnet
  3. 3
    An apparatus used to maintain environmental conditions suitable for a newborn baby.
  4. 4
    An apparatus used to maintain environmental conditions suitable for the hatching of eggs.
  5. 5
    A place to maintain the culturing of bacteria at a steady temperature.
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  1. 6
    A support programme for the development of entrepreneurial companies.

    "So the question that is commonly asked is, why put a media incubator in a media desert and have it managed by a civil servant? This gets to the heart of the institutional support problem in Wales."

Synonyms

All synonyms
brooderbirthplacebroodercradlehotbednest

Example

More examples

"I don't want to be Sami's incubator."

Etymology

From incubate + -or.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.