Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- The cradle or early abode; the place in which a thing had its earliest development, as a race, an art, etc.; hence, first trace; beginning; origin.
- In ornithology, a breeding-place; the resort of a bird to breed.
- In bibliography, books printed in the infancy of the art; generally, books printed before the year 1500: in this sense rarely with a singular incunabulum.
Wiktionary
- n. Plural form of incunabulum.
Examples
“The primitive woodcuts in incunabula are now almost too highly appreciated.”
“Sallenave was an avid collector of butterflies, as well as Old Master prints and rare books, particularly those printed before 1501, so-called incunabula.”
“Red Witch miscellaneous notes on Wiccan 'incunabula': curious and interesting stories from newspapers, magazines, pamphlets and books, press photos and postcards and other items relating to influential witches and the infancy of the modern witchcraft movement.”
“So maybe at the outset of this 'incunabula' period, you are doing exactly what needs be done.”
“These are generally rare books, such as incunabula and the higher class English literature of the seventeenth century, and are to be found in the libraries of wealthy collectors who are also learned men.”
“These truly remarkable collections include a notable collection of rare atlases; a good cross-section of 'incunabula' (i.e. early books printed in Europe pre-1501); an important collection of early printed Bibles; key English and European texts from the Protestant Reformation; a substantial collection of scarce political tracts from the Civil War; rare books on natural history, geography, and so on, and so on.”
“Fr. Augustine Thompson, O.P. A kind friar has called it to my attention that three incunabula containing Dominican liturgical materials are now available in digital form on the web.”
“He had repaired all types of books, from Bibles to incunabula with pages on the point of turning to dust.”
The Huffington Post: Yoani Sanchez: "The Murmurs Overlap... Everyone Spies on Everyone."
“I have published a few articles on untranslatable incunabula without bothering to offer any solutions, a few reviews of what is current in glyptology, cryptology, and cryptanalysis.”
“There is a mathematical structure in the natural world that can be revealed or obscured by arranging Curiositez de la Mer des Indes, with its rich illustrations of the most bizarre creatures to swim the seas, in proximity to Elementa Geometriae, and a curiosity in the development of ideas discovered by keeping his incunabula together.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘incunabula’.
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The Bindery
A list of bookbinding terms and phrases, for assembling new or repairing/reassembling old books.
perfect binding, animal glue, spine, textblock, polyvinyl acetate, double-fan adhesi..., board, backing, rounding, bone, book cloth, pasteboard and 270 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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cicatrix
scar tissue
minatory, naira, Cluniac, embracive, prolix, hierophant, timorous, adduce, veracious, dysphoric, sang-froid, vitiate and 505 more...
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eg's list
lexicolony
nefandous, ineffable, ultracrepidate, haecceity, quiddity, noumenon, hypokeimenon, extemporaneous, theomastix, caducity, niddering, tellurian and 16 more...
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juv3nal's Words
ligature, hermeneutic, caduceus, prelapsarian, apophenia, pataphor, lipogram, epinephrine, ludic, samizdat, oulipo, oulipopo and 194 more...
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To Learn
enervate, redolent, distaff, approbation, arrogate, bonhomie, palliate, calumny, panoply, contumacious, edify, dyspeptic and 188 more...
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exlotuseater's Words
autocthonous, anacoluthon, benthic, bactrian, caryatid, chiastic, dryad, dromedary, effulgent, elixir, fricative, fungible and 145 more...
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thekatespanos's list
pomposity, gaggle, scintilla, lemming, bilk, vanquish, conflate, plenary, verisimilitude, perspicacious, rattletrap, obdurate and 325 more...
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ktrey's wordlist
Words that I like.
Many may be lexicographically impotent due to a lack of citations and definition. Hopefully I'll be able to rectify this eventually.velleity, dispositive, bloviate, bibulous, fungible, concupiscence, avuncular, carnaptious, thrawn, hypocoristic, diegesis, lagniappe and 928 more...
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Rare Books
Words used in the rare book trade (of which I was once a part). For more about how such books are put together, see hernesheir's excellent The Bindery.
foxing, gilt, headband, bumped, endpaper, leaf, colophon, vellum, laid paper, boards, device, engraving and 168 more...
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gerwitz's Words
erudite, autodidactic, callipygian, ouroboros, zounds, fie, wabi, sabi, gedankenexperiment, zeitgeist, eliminativism, aether and 157 more...
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spicolli's Words
terrapin, ravenous, fuck, sepulchral, garlic, suss, queer, curmudgeon, foodie, intricate, omphalos, subversion and 534 more...
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Uncle John’s Interesting Words
Words I find interesting.
abecedarius, acomoclitic, aperçu, apophenia, aspic, bêtise, bhang, callipygian, calque, carking, cataphract, ceruminous and 97 more...
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bertilak's Words
antidisestablishm..., feldercarb, wainscoting, eleemosynary, oxymoron, fuliginous, libration, lammergeier, saxifrage, ichor, lambent, smaragdine and 414 more...
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C. S. Bird – Grandiloquent Dictionary
All the words from the Grandiloquent Dictionary.
946 of these 2700 words do not yield any results in six different dictionaries, hence many of them might be misspellings.
More in...abacinate, abcedarian, abderian, ablegate, abligurition, ablutophobia, abnormous, acarophobia, acathasia, accipitrine, accidia, accubitus and 2690 more...
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Words of Whimsy & Grace
abecedary, addendum, ampersand, anachronism, avuncular, balderdash, barnacle, befuddle, behemoth, bejeebers, blabbermouth, blatherskite and 465 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for incunabula.
john “As a young man Mr. Friedlaender had collected stamps in a serious way. In 1970 he began collecting rare books, specializing in incunabula — European books printed before 1501 — and medieval illuminated manuscripts.�?
The New York Times, H. N. Friedlaender, Bibliophile, Dies at 95, by William Grimes, November 30, 2008
Dec 2, 2008
reesetee From the Latin "cunae" (cradle)--as in the "cradle days" of printing; referring to books and other printed material produced using moveable type (usu. before 1501). Feb 20, 2007