Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The act of incarnating.
  • noun The condition of being incarnated.
  • noun Christianity The doctrine that the Son of God was conceived in the womb of Mary and that Jesus is true God and true man.
  • noun A bodily manifestation of a supernatural being.
  • noun One who is believed to personify a given abstract quality or idea.
  • noun A period of time passed in a given bodily form or condition.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The act of incarnating or clothing with flesh; the act of assuming flesh or a human body and the nature of man; the state of being incarnated.
  • noun In surgery, the process whereby a wound heals, the affected part becoming filled with new flesh; granulation.
  • noun A representation in an incarnate form; a personification; a visible embodiment; a distinct exemplification in form or act.
  • noun The color of flesh; carnation.
  • noun In botany, the carnation.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The act of clothing with flesh, or the state of being so clothed; the act of taking, or being manifested in, a human body and nature.
  • noun (Theol.) The union of the second person of the Godhead with manhood in Christ.
  • noun An incarnate form; a personification; a manifestation; a reduction to apparent from; a striking exemplification in person or act.
  • noun obsolete A rosy or red color; flesh color; carnation.
  • noun (Med.) The process of healing wounds and filling the part with new flesh; granulation.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun An incarnate being or form.
  • noun A living being embodying a deity or spirit.
  • noun An assumption of human form or nature.
  • noun A person or thing regarded as embodying or exhibiting some quality, idea, or the like
  • noun The act of incarnating.
  • noun The state of being incarnated.
  • noun obsolete A rosy or red colour; flesh colour; carnation.
  • noun medicine, obsolete The process of healing wounds and filling the part with new flesh; granulation.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the act of attributing human characteristics to abstract ideas etc.
  • noun (Christianity) the Christian doctrine of the union of God and man in the person of Jesus Christ
  • noun a new personification of a familiar idea
  • noun time passed in a particular bodily form

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

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

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Examples

  • Those flowers are a pun, carrying as they do the root of the word incarnation within their name.

    The Poet Prince KATHLEEN MCGOWAN 2010

  • My atheist friend used the term incarnation to point to what he called the “miracle of awareness.

    Kansas City Star: Front Page 2010

  • My atheist friend used the term incarnation to point to what he called the "miracle of awareness."

    Kansas City Star: Front Page 2010

  • This book, at least in this incarnation is around 500 pages long, and a lot of the middle is taken up with other threads, that while tangentially interesting are nowhere near as good as the parts featuring Cormac and his directly related allies themselves.

    Superhero Prose Fiction: Polity - 3 Brass Man Blue Tyson 2008

  • First performed in 1991, with a dazzlingly white-and-black skewed set, La Bete's current incarnation is in a towering library.

    Fern Siegel: Stage Door: La Bete, A Life in the Theater, Lady Rizo Fern Siegel 2010

  • First performed in 1991, with a dazzlingly white-and-black skewed set, La Bete's current incarnation is in a towering library.

    Fern Siegel: Stage Door: La Bete, A Life in the Theater, Lady Rizo Fern Siegel 2010

  • The judge was making the point that the Pledge, in its current incarnation, is only about 50 – 60 years old and that the language “under God” was inserted at a particular time in response to concerns of that time and that the Pledge is not some sacrosanct invocation from the founders.

    The Volokh Conspiracy » Judge Reinhardt’s Dig on Sarah Palin 2010

  • First performed in 1991, with a dazzlingly white-and-black skewed set, La Bete's current incarnation is in a towering library.

    Fern Siegel: Stage Door: La Bete, A Life in the Theater, Lady Rizo Fern Siegel 2010

  • Squatting somewhere between MGMT, The Inbetweeners and Derek Zoolander, this modern incarnation is all mouth and skinny trousers.

    Why do people hate hipsters? Alex Rayner 2010

  • Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 The Eagle in its most recent, post-Giuliani incarnation is still at 554 West 28th Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues in a relatively quiet corner of Chelsea in New York.

    Archive 2009-01-01 2009

Comments

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  • I found his word in an article called " The Path of The Drifter" by Nathan Myers. It is used in the sentence as followed, " Falling in love with this new place, this new mind, and this new incarnation of his surfing."

    September 22, 2010