Word.ws English Dictionary

incumbents

incumbents is the plural of incumbent.

Meaning of incumbent

Noun

incumbent (plural incumbents)

  1. The current holder of an office or title; (specifically, Christianity) the holder of an ecclesiastical benefice.
    • He has always remained friendly to me, though before his promotion, when he was an incumbent of this diocese, we had a little controversy about the Bible Society.1876, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter XXIV, in Daniel Deronda, volume II, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book III (Maidens Choosing), page 123
    Antonyms:
    nonincumbent
  2. A holder of a position as supplier to a market or market segment that allows the holder to earn above-normal profits.
    • American capitalism is becoming like its European cousin: established firms with the scale and scope to deal with a growing thicket of regulations are doing well, but new companies are withering on the vine or selling themselves to incumbents.2012 September 29, “Schumpeter: Fixing the capitalist machine”, in The Economist, London: The Economist Group, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 29 Sep 2012
    Antonyms:
    nonincumbent

See all 11 meanings of incumbent

Questions about incumbents

What is incumbents the plural of?
Incumbents is the plural of incumbent.

Words near incumbents in the dictionary

  1. incumbency
  2. incumbent
  3. incumbentess
  4. incumbentesses
  5. incumbently
  6. incumbents
  7. incumber
  8. incumbered
  9. incumbering
  10. incumberingly
  11. incumberment

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: incumbents (page history and authors); incumbent (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “incumbents.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/incumbents. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.