incunabulum

• incunable

From Latin incūnābulum (“cradle, origin”).

• IPA^(key): /ˌɪn.kjʊˈnæb.jʊ.ləm/

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incunabulum (plural incunabula)

1. A book, single sheet, or image that was printed before the year 1501 in Europe.
   • 2004, Luisa Graves (translator), Carlos Ruiz Zafón (author), The Shadow of the Wind,

     Something about him reminded me of one of those figures from old-fashioned playing cards or the sort used by fortune-tellers, a print straight from the pages of an incunabulum: his presence was both funereal and incandescent, like a curse dressed in its Sunday best.

• This word is better known, and more widely used, in its plural form, incunabula.

• incunabular
• incunabulist

• incunable on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• “Incunabulum” in Michael Quinion, World Wide Words, 1996–.
• Incunabula Collections, The British Library

From in- +‎ cūnābulum.

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /in.kuːˈnaː.bu.lum/, [ɪŋ.kuːˈnaː.bʊ.ɫũ]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /in.kuˈna.bu.lum/, [iŋ.kuˈnaː.bu.lum]

incūnābulum n (genitive incūnābulī); second declension

1. (especially in the plural) the apparatus of the cradle
2. birthplace, origin

Second declension.

• Carl Meissner; Henry William Auden (1894) Latin Phrase-Book‎, London: Macmillan and Co.
  • (ambiguous) the origin, first beginnings of learning: incunabula doctrinae