Word.ws English Dictionary

incunabulum

/ˌɪn.kjʊˈnæb.jʊ.ləm/

incunabulum noun: a book, single sheet, or image that was printed before the year 1501 in Europe.

incunabulum: a book, single sheet, or image that was printed before the year 1501 in Europe
Image: Lunkwill, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

incunabulum (plural incunabula)

  1. 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
    • Something about him reminded me of one of those figures from old-fashioned playing cards or the sort used by fortune-tellers, a print straight from the pages of an incunabulum: his presence was both funereal and incandescent, like a curse dressed in its Sunday best.2004, Luisa Graves, The Shadow of the Wind, translation of original by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
    Synonyms:
    fifteener
  2. (in plural) The cradle, birthplace, or origin of something.

incunabulum meaning in Bengali and Indonesian

incunabulum in Bengali

মুদ্রণশিল্পের প্রথম দিকের বই

incunabulum in Indonesian

book, sheet or image
inkunabula

Synonyms of incunabulum

Forms of incunabulum

pluralincunabula

Origin of incunabulum

Borrowed from Latin incūnābulum (“cradle, origin”).

Questions about incunabulum

What does incunabulum mean?
Incunabulum means a book, single sheet, or image that was printed before the year 1501 in Europe.
What is incunabulum in Bengali?
Incunabulum in Bengali is মুদ্রণশিল্পের প্রথম দিকের বই. See Incunabulum meaning in Bengali.
What part of speech is incunabulum?
Incunabulum is a noun.
How do you pronounce incunabulum?
Incunabulum is pronounced /ˌɪn.kjʊˈnæb.jʊ.ləm/.
What is the plural of incunabulum?
The plural of incunabulum is incunabula.

Words near incunabulum in the dictionary

  1. incunables
  2. incunabula
  3. incunabular
  4. incunabulist
  5. incunabulists
  6. incunabulum
  7. incur
  8. incurability
  9. incurable
  10. incurableness
  11. incurables

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: incunabulum (page history and authors); incunabulum (Bengali Wiktionary) (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-incunabulum.ogg.

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