incubation

1. 1.

   maintaining something at the most favorable temperature for its development

   Broadercare
2. 2.

   (pathology) the phase in the development of an infection between the time a pathogen enters the body and the time the first symptoms appear

   Broaderphase

   Part ofinfection

   pathology

3. 3.

   sitting on eggs so as to hatch them by the warmth of the body

   Synonymsbrooding

   Broaderparturition

Other forms of incubation

plural

incubations·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about incubation

What does incubation mean?

incubation means "maintaining something at the most favorable temperature for its development". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in incubation?

incubation has 4 syllables: in-cu-ba-tion. The stress falls on "ba". In IPA it is /ˌɪŋkjuˈbeɪʃən/.

What is another word for incubation?

Close synonyms include brooding. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is incubation a common word?

incubation is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.

What rhymes with incubation?

5 words rhyme with incubation. Rhymes are matched on the phonemes from the last stressed vowel onward, which is the definition a reader has in their head.