- 1
An inchoate idea, plan, feeling, or attitude is only just starting to form. It is not finished, not clear, and not ready to use. You might have an inchoate sense that a job is wrong for you, long before you can explain why. The word is rare in chat; it lives in serious writing. Though actually, lawyers use it with a sharper edge. An inchoate offence is a crime that has been begun but not completed — an attempt, or a plan that never quite happens. The picture is the same: started, not yet fully there. People say it two ways, roughly in-KOH-it and in-KOH-ayt; both are used. It is easy to glance at the spelling and think of incoherent, which means “all in a mess, impossible to follow.” An inchoate plan is not necessarily a mess. It is simply early.
尚未成形的、剛萌芽的。法律上也可指已著手但尚未完成的犯罪。
組成From Latin incohātus, “begun, unfinished,” the participle of incohō, “to begin.” First recorded as an adjective in 1534. English spelling has ch; the Latin is incohō. Cognate with Spanish incoar, “to begin.”
同家族的字
- inchoativea grammar term for verbs that mean “starting to…,” from the same Latin verb
原始詞典資料7 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
inchoateadj/ɪnˈkəʊət/
- 1
Recently started but not fully formed yet; just begun; only elementary or immature.
- neither a substance perfect, nor a substance inchoate
- It do's indeed perfect and crown thoſe graces which were here inchoate and begun, but no mans converſion ever ſucceeded his being there ...
- 2
Chaotic, disordered, confused; also, incoherent, rambling.
- The Met's chairman, Sir Edward Watkin, was also chairman of that company [the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway], which duplicated other railways' routes in an inchoate way between Manchester and Grimsby, and generally stumbled about the north.
- 3
lawOf a crime, imposing criminal liability for an incompleted act.
- Congress considers the inchoate offenses of attempt and conspiracy, even conspiracy without an overt act, to be just as serious as the federal substantive drug offenses which they contemplate.
inchoatenoun/ɪnˈkəʊət/
- 1
rareA beginning, an immature start.
inchoateverb/ɪnˈkəʊeɪt/
- 1
To begin or start (something).
- 2
To cause or bring about. In the field of criminology, to encourage, assist, conspire, aid and abet, incite, etc.
- 3
To make a start.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。