inchoate
/ɪnˈkəʊeɪt
/ /ˈɪnkəʊeɪt/ /ɪnˈkəʊət/adjective
1Just begun and so not fully formed or developed; rudimentary: a still inchoate democracy...
- The ‘information society’ is only explicable in terms of the future, of its ultimate limits rather than its incipient, inchoate beginnings.
- Moreover, new power structures and established institutions invariably come to replace the old ones, and any initial glow of inchoate democracy can easily be undermined by the rising centers of symbolic power.
- We saw all the early inchoate gestures of the alternative comedy movement when it was still alternative, and before it had swamped the festival with its commercial machine.
1.1Confused or incoherent: inchoate proletarian protest...
- His conscience flounders in inchoate confusion as he tries to decide what his surface actions should accomplish instead of asking how their long-term consequences will unfold.
- War also can be inchoate and incoherent, its object not far removed from insensate mayhem.
- A Captain Shanks at Camp 020 concluded that ‘his mental powers are abnormal, his memory hopeless and his mind an inchoate jumble’.
2 Law (Of an offence, such as incitement or conspiracy) anticipating or preparatory to a further criminal act.Conspiracy is one of the three inchoate offences in English criminal law, to be discussed in Chapter 11 below, but conspiracy may also be charged when the acts agreed upon have actually been committed....
- This is essentially the key question in deciding on the appropriate basis for the criminal responsibility required for commission of the inchoate offences of incitement, conspiracy and attempt.
- The essence of conspiracy is inchoate and the criminality is not to be judged merely by reference to those objectives which are actually achieved.
Derivatives
inchoately
- Rather, the current strain is wrought of a convergence of forces, complicating manifestations of history, ideology, experience, and ambition that have always swirled around the German-American relationship, however inchoately.
- ‘Congregation’ has a religious connotation, and indeed many of Ossorio's works in this mode draw, if sometimes inchoately, on religious themes.
- The most effective poets, it seems to me, understand that their art depends on their access to their original narratives, those life studies that, involuntarily, inchoately, dream their way back to us.
inchoateness
- The spectre of plurality and difference became a pseudonym for inchoateness and ineffectiveness.
- But we're not privy to what is going on inside the artist's head, as his ideas evolve from inchoateness to coherence.
- Likewise, any structured situation, if it is effectively challenged, may lose its wholeness and revert to inchoateness or shift to an alternative structure.
Origin
Mid 16th century: from Latin inchoatus, past participle of inchoare, variant of incohare 'begin'.