incubator
nounUK /ˈɪn.kjuːˌbeɪ.tə(ɹ)/ · US [ˈɪn.kjuːˌbeɪ.ɾɚ]
Etymology From incubate + -or.
1
Chemistry, Natural sciences, Physical sciences Any apparatus used to maintain environmental conditions suitable for a reaction.
2
Medicine, Sciences An apparatus used to maintain environmental conditions suitable for a newborn baby.
3
An apparatus used to maintain environmental conditions suitable for the hatching of eggs.
4
A place to maintain the culturing of bacteria at a steady temperature.
5
Business A support programme for the development of entrepreneurial companies.
- So the question that is commonly asked is, why put a media incubator in a media desert and have it managed by a civil servant? This gets to the heart of the institutional support problem in Wales.2006, Philip N. Cooke, Creative Industries in Wales: Potential and Pitfalls, page 34:
- Tech City is very big on "incubators" – places where startups are supposed to grow out of a collection of adjacent desks in a huge barracks of other adjacent desks – and on luring big firms to the East End of London.2014 March 10, Cory Doctorow, “The slow death of Silicon Roundabout”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:
- Derived terms
- bioincubator, microincubator
- Related terms
- incubate, incubation, incubative