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Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. adj. Invested with bodily nature and form: an incarnate spirit.
  2. adj. Embodied in human form; personified: a villain who is evil incarnate.
  3. adj. Incarnadine.
  4. v. To give bodily, especially human, form to.
  5. v. To personify.
  6. v. To realize in action or fact; actualize: a community that incarnates its founders' ideals.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. To clothe with flesh; embody in flesh.
  2. To form flesh; heal, as a wound, by granulation.
  3. Invested with flesh; embodied in flesh.
  4. Of a red color; flesh-colored.
  5. Not carnate or in the flesh; divested of a body; disembodied.

Wiktionary

  1. adj. Embodied in flesh; given a bodily, especially a human, form; personified.
  2. adj. Flesh-colored, crimson.
  3. v. To incarn; to become covered with flesh, to heal over.
  4. v. To make carnal, to reduce the spiritual nature of.
  5. v. To embody in flesh, invest with a bodily, especially a human, form.
  6. v. To put into or represent in a concrete form, as an idea.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. adj. Not in the flesh; spiritual.
  2. adj. Invested with flesh; embodied in a human nature and form; united with, or having, a human body.
  3. adj. Flesh-colored; rosy; red.
  4. v. To clothe with flesh; to embody in flesh; to invest, as spirits, ideals, etc., with a human from or nature.
  5. v. To form flesh; to granulate, as a wound.

WordNet 3.0

  1. v. make concrete and real
  2. adj. invested with a bodily form especially of a human body
  3. adj. possessing or existing in bodily form
  4. v. represent in bodily form

Etymologies

  1. Middle English, from Late Latin incarnātus, past participle of incarnāre, to make flesh : Latin in-, causative pref.; see in-2 + Latin carō, carn-, flesh; see sker-1 in Indo-European roots.

Examples

  • “Bill used the word incarnate when describing Obama.”

    Bill: "Barack Obama Is The Man For This Job"

  • “So I brought out the dirhams and sat down to await his return; but he stayed away from me a third month, and I said, “Verily this young man is liberality in incarnate form.””

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night

  • “Although we might be tempted to see Spencer as evil incarnate, is there anything that might help us to understand him, or, at least to some extent, to empathize with him?”

    A Conversation with Jodi Picoult

  • “Jesus is the word incarnate … Hence the word is Christ”

    WordPress.com News

  • “Notice the Latin root incarnare which we find in the English word incarnate.”

    Archive 2006-10-01

  • “First, some of the schoolmen have found no other respect wherefore the manhood of Christ can be said to be adored, (728) except this, that the flesh of Christ is adored by him who adores the word incarnate, even as the king’s clothes are adored by him who adores the king.”

    The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2)

  • “In this they were standing upon the high ground taken by Richard Baxter, an authority among the Puritans, who, denouncing the use of the slaves as beasts for their mere commodity, said, that their masters who "betray or destroy or neglect their souls are fitter to be called incarnate devils than Christians though they be no Christian whom they so abuse.”

    The History of the Negro Church

  • “That the idea of incarnate deity should be found in pre-Christian Hindu thought is not so remarkable when we consider that it answers to the yearning of the human heart for union with God.”

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 2: Assizes-Browne

  • “He argues that if the three Divine Persons form but one God all three have become incarnate, which is inadmissible.”

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 13: Revelation-Stock

  • “Such a being would really deserve to be called the incarnate "word of God.”

    The Johannine Writings

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‘incarnate’ has been looked up 1608 times, loved by 1 person, added to 36 lists, and has a Scrabble score of 11.