Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use incubate in a sentence

31 example sentences · verb, noun

Incubate means to brood, raise, or maintain eggs, organisms, or living tissue through the provision of ideal environmental conditions. Example: “The cocultures of HeLa cells and lymphocytes were incubated for 24 hours.”

Examples of incubate by meaning

verbTo brood, raise, or maintain eggs, organisms, or living tissue through the provision of ideal environmental conditions.

  • Both parents incubate and the scene is animated as the birds fly about in all directions.1907, “Nesting Habits of the Passenger Pigeon”, in W. B. Mershon, editor, The Passenger Pigeon
  • For instance, the hen must patiently sit on her eggs to incubate them before the baby chicks hatch.1975, Catherine Marshall, Adventures in Prayer, New York: Ballantine Books, page 46
  • The mother dead these fourteen years did incubate in her own bosom the creature who would carry her off.1985, Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian […] , →OCLC

verbTo incubate metaphorically; to ponder an idea slowly and deliberately as if in preparation for hatching it.

  • It was a habit he developed, of incubating and maturing his thought upon a subject, and of then rushing into the type-writer with it.1908 September – 1909 September, Jack London, chapter XXIII, in Martin Eden, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, published September...
  • When you've got your theme–let the concept incubate.1992, Sheila Davis, The Songwriters Idea Book: 40 Strategies to Excite Your Imagination, Help You Design Distinctive Songs, and Keep Your...

More sentences with incubate

  • The cocultures of HeLa cells and lymphocytes were incubated for 24 hours.From the entry coculture
  • For some experiments, DCs were incubated with biopharmacological inhibitors to various molecules.2015 July 28, “Pneumococal Surface Protein A (PspA) Regulates Programmed Death Ligand 1 Expression on Dendritic Cells in a Toll-Like…. From the entry biopharmacological
  • DNA and Lipofectin were incubated with medium for precomplexing in 2.5% of the final volume.2015 August 12, “Genomic Analysis and Isolation of RNA Polymerase II Dependent Promoters from Spodoptera frugiperda”, in PLOS ONE, →DOI. From the entry precomplexing
  • Labyrinth fish are nest builders, and the males maintain the nest and incubate the eggs.2010, Beth Vanhorn, Robert W. Clark, Veterinary Assisting Fundamentals & Applications, page 2017. From the entry labyrinth fish
  • The hairpinned substrate was incubated with extracts from cells infected by both AAV and adenovirus.2005, Jonathan Kerr, Susan Cotmore, Marshall E. Bloom, Parvoviruses, page 194. From the entry hairpinned
  • The mixture is incubated at 75°C until chocolating has taken place.2003, Mark A. Herbert, Haemophilus influenzae Protocols, page 73. From the entry chocolate
  • While incubating with the primary antibody, preswell the protein A–Sepharose beads overnight.2001, Roberto Bruzzone, Christian Giaume, Connexin Methods and Protocols, →ISBN, page 245. From the entry preswell
  • “Jes.” Espinoza’s smile is that of a man incubating a major case of the happies.2000 March, Larry Karp, chapter 19, in Scamming the Birdman (A Thomas Purdue Mystery; 2), Aurora, Colo.: Write Way Publishing, →ISBN, page…. From the entry happies
  • Maybe it's neither fiber, optics nor wires that are incubating the revolution in communications.1993 August 28, Russell Baker, “Observer; Man Here Can't Jubilate”, in New York Times. From the entry whatevers
  • The preseed was incubated with mild agitation at 30 "C for 24 h.1990, DE Steinmeyer, ML Shuler, “Continuous operation of a pressure-cycled membrane bioreactor”, in Biotechnology Progress. From the entry preseed
  • One reason that could explain some self-interruptions is that they occur when people need a problem to incubate.2022, Gloria Mark, Multitasking in the Digital Age, Springer International Publishing, page 36. From the entry self-interrupt
  • Punches were placed in haemolysing reagent (Thermo Fisher Scientific), in duplicate or triplicate, and incubated at room temperature with shaking.2015 July 8, Claudio A. Mastronardi et al., “The use of dried blood spot sampling for the measurement of HbA1c: a cross-sectional study”…. From the entry haemolyse
  • Eggs are incubated in all four gills (tetragenous).2012, G. Bauer, K. Wächtler, Ecology and Evolution of the Freshwater Mussels Unionoida, page 234. From the entry tetragenous
  • Synchronized cultures of P. falciparum trophozoites were grown in human RBCs and incubated with increasing concentrations of purified human platelets.2009 February 6, Brendan J. McMorran et al., “Platelets Kill Intraerythrocytic Malarial Parasites and Mediate Survival to Infection”, in…. From the entry trophozoite
  • After several washes in PBST, the filters were incubated in echochemiluminescence detection solutions (Amersham, Arlington Heights, IL) and exposed.2000, Shigeki Takemoto et al., “p53 stabilization and functional impairment in the absence of genetic mutation or the alteration of the…. From the entry echochemiluminescence
  • Bacteria were plated on trypticase soy agar (TSA), incubated at 37 °C for 15 h and subsequently diluted using the McFarland optical density standard.2015 July 3, Claudia Guldimann et al., “Increased spread and replication efficiency of Listeria monocytogenes in organotypic brain-slices…. From the entry trypticase
  • Recently, Hollon et al. investigated the intestinal permeability in human duodenal biopsies mounted in microsnapwells and luminally incubated with either gliadin or media alone.2015, Carlo Catassi et al., “Diagnosis of Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity (NCGS): The Salerno Experts’ Criteria”, in Nutrients, volume 7, →DOI. From the entry microsnapwells
  • After cooling on ice, the samples were incubated with 30 mM iodoacetamide for 1 h in the dark to carbamidomethylate the cysteine residues.2015, Karunya Srinivasan et al., “A Quantitative Microtiter Assay for Sialylated Glycoform Analyses Using Lectin Complexes”, in Journal of…. From the entry carbamidomethylate
  • The thermostabilizing effect of Ca 2+ binding to avian rNA was investigated by incubating the purified protein with increasing concentrations of Ca 2+ .2015 August 18, “Expression and Characterization of Recombinant, Tetrameric and Enzymatically Active Influenza Neuraminidase for the Setup…. From the entry thermostabilizing
  • To test whether TPR1e was able to triphosphorylate free nucleosides, 14 C labeled guanosine was incubated with eight different variants of TPR1e.2015 November 7, “A Faster Triphosphorylation Ribozyme”, in PLOS ONE, →DOI. From the entry triphosphorylate
  • After washing, recombinant human CD28 protein (R&D Systems, Abingdon, UK) and samples were triplicately added and incubated for 2 hours at 37˚C.2014 June 27, Zhongwen Sun et al., “Enhancement of soluble CD28 levels in the serum of Graves’ disease”, in Central-European Journal of…. From the entry triplicately
  • During pairing, mates walk an average of only 90 m per day, and, while incubating, male emperors move an average of 30 m per day.2012, Lloyd S. Davis, John T. Darby, Penguin Biology, page 273. From the entry emperor
  • In another approach, antiglobulin neutralization was carried out by incubating the antiglobulin reagents directly with sugar-coated erythrocytes that had been sensitized with antisugar antibodies.1984, P Lalezari, AF Jiang, M Kumar, I Lalezari, “Carbohydrate‐Specific Antibodies in Normal Human Sera: I. Characterization of…. From the entry antisugar
  • The necessary spagyric substances having been obtained, they were shut up in a glass phial and left to incubate in horse dung for forty days.1936, Rollo Ahmed, The Black Art, London: Long, page 135. From the entry spagyric
  • Au-NRs were incubated in BSA at the concentrations shown, subjected to five cycles of centrifugation and redispersion in water and then analyzed for LSPR peak intensity and peak shift.2015 July 6, “MUC1-Targeted Cancer Cell Photothermal Ablation Using Bioinspired Gold Nanorods”, in PLOS ONE, →DOI. From the entry redispersion
  • Cryosections of 5 μm thickness were incubated overnight at 37°C with X-gal solution pH 8.5 (vWR International, Heverlee, Belgium), counterstained with paracarmine and mounted in Mowiol.2015 August 22, “Amniotic Fluid Derived Stem Cells with a Renal Progenitor Phenotype Inhibit Interstitial Fibrosis in Renal Ischemia and…. From the entry paracarmine

Meaning of incubate

  1. verb To brood, raise, or maintain eggs, organisms, or living tissue through the provision of ideal environmental conditions.
  2. verb To incubate metaphorically; to ponder an idea slowly and deliberately as if in preparation for hatching it.
  3. noun A preparation, or material, that has been incubated.

Full definition of incubate

Questions about incubate in a sentence

How do you use incubate in a sentence?
Incubate is used as a verb and noun. For example: “The cocultures of HeLa cells and lymphocytes were incubated for 24 hours.”
What is a short sentence with incubate?
“Eggs are incubated in all four gills (tetragenous).”
What does incubate mean?
Incubate means to brood, raise, or maintain eggs, organisms, or living tissue through the provision of ideal environmental conditions.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: incubate (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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