incunable
/ɪnˈkjuːnəbəl/
incunable is the alternative form of incunabulum.
Meaning of incunabulum
Noun
incunabulum (plural incunabula)
- A book, single sheet, or image that was printed before the year 1501 in Europe.
- Sebastian, a profound student of such lore, had long believed that the book was a mere medieval legend; and he had been startled as well as gratified when he found this copy on the shelves of a dealer in old manuscripts and incunabula.August 1935, Clark Ashton Smith, “The Treader of the Dust”, in Weird Tales
- Synonyms:
- fifteener
- The cradle, birthplace, or origin of something.
Forms of incunable
| plural | incunables |
|---|
Origin of incunable
From French incunable, from Latin incūnābula (“swaddling-clothes, cradle”).
Questions about incunable
- What is incunable the alternative form of?
- Incunable is the alternative form of incunabulum.
- How do you pronounce incunable?
- Incunable is pronounced /ɪnˈkjuːnəbəl/.
Words near incunable in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: incunable (page history and authors); incunabulum (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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “incunable.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/incunable. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.