incarnation

From Middle English incarnacion, borrowed from Old French incarnacion, from Medieval Latin, Ecclesiastical Latin incarnatio, from Late Latin incarnari (“to be made flesh”).

• Rhymes: -eɪʃən

incarnation (countable and uncountable, plural incarnations)

1. An incarnate being or form.
   • Jeffrey

     She is a new incarnation of some of the illustrious dead.

   • F. W. Robertson

     The very incarnation of selfishness.

   • 2013 June 8, “Obama goes troll-hunting”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8839, page 55:

     The solitary, lumbering trolls of Scandinavian mythology would sometimes be turned to stone by exposure to sunlight. Barack Obama is hoping that several measures announced on June 4th will have a similarly paralysing effect on their modern incarnation, the patent troll.

2. A living being embodying a deity or spirit.
3. An assumption of human form or nature.
4. A person or thing regarded as embodying or exhibiting some quality, idea, or the like.

   The leading dancer is the incarnation of grace.

5. The act of incarnating.
6. The state of being incarnated.
7. (obsolete) A rosy or red colour; flesh colour; carnation.
8. (medicine, obsolete) The process of healing wounds and filling the part with new flesh; granulation.

• carnal
• incarnate
• reincarnate
• reincarnation

• incarnation in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• incarnation in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

From Middle French incarnation, from Old French incarnacion, borrowed from Ecclesiastical Latin incarnātiō, incarnātiōnem.

• IPA^(key): /ɛ̃.kaʁ.na.sjɔ̃/

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incarnation f (plural incarnations)

1. embodiment (entity typifying an abstraction)

• incarner

• “incarnation” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

From Old French incarnacion, borrowed from Ecclesiastical Latin incarnātiō, incarnātiōnem.

incarnation f (plural incarnations)

1. (Christianity) Incarnation. Specifically, the incarnation of God in the form of Jesus Christ.

• French: incarnation

• incarnation on Dictionnaire du Moyen Français (1330-1500) (in French)