incarnate
verbUK /ˈɪnkɑːneɪt/
Etymology First attested in 1533; borrowed from Ecclesiastical Latin incarnātus, see -ate (verb-forming suffix) and Etymology 1 for more.
1
To embody in flesh; to invest with a bodily, especially a human, form.
- For one thing, we virtually decided that these morbidities and the hellish Himalayan Mi-Go were one and the same order of incarnated nightmare.1931, H. P. Lovecraft, chapter 2, in The Whisperer in Darkness:
- Not all of the soul can incarnate into a body; the part which is left above is the psyche.1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 218:
2
Broadly To gain full existence (bodily or otherwise).
- SCP-3125 incarnated the following winter.2019 August 26, qntm, “Unthreaded”, in There Is No Antimemetics Division, →ISBN, page 161:
3
Obsolete To incarn; to become covered with flesh; to heal over.
- My uncle Toby’s wound was near well, and as soon as the surgeon recovered his surprize, and could get leave to say as much—he told him, 'twas just beginning to incarnate.1760, Laurence Sterne, The Life & Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Penguin, published 2003, page 83:
4
To make carnal; to reduce the spiritual nature of.
- This essence to incarnate and imbrute, / That to the height of deity aspired.1667, John Milton, “Book VIII”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC:
5
Figuratively To put into or represent in a concrete form, as an idea.
- Truly, that special world presented itself to me as the arena of my perceptual activity and therefore as the world of my first reading. The texts, the words, the letters of that context were incarnated in a series of things, objects, and signs.2005, Paulo Freire, Donaldo Macedo, Literacy: Reading the Word and the World, →ISBN, page 20:
- Responding to this in confusion, perhaps you construct an Idea, a structure, a multiplicity, a system of multiple, nonlocalisable ideal connections which is then incarnated. It is incarnated in real (not ideal) relations and actual (physical) terms, each of which exists in relation to each other, reciprocally determining each other.2006, Constantin V. Boundas, Deleuze and Philosophy, →ISBN, page 160:
1 more example
- The two are fused together in a single act and single product, precisely as an idea incarnated in an image, i.e., the expression of an embodied-spirit, grasped all at once as a meaning shining through a manifold of images and held as one in the unity of human consciousness which is simultaneously intellectual and sensible.2013, B.E. Babich, Hermeneutic Philosophy of Science, Van Gogh’s Eyes, and God, →ISBN:
- Derived terms
- disincarnate, incarnatable, nonincarnated, unincarnated
- Related terms
- carnal, excarnate, excarnation, incarnation, reincarnate, reincarnation