INCUBATION • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Incubation

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/ˌɪŋkjubˈeɪʃən/ Listen

noun

Incubation n.

A sitting on eggs for the purpose of hatching young; a brooding on, or keeping warm, (eggs) to develop the life within, by any process.

(Med.) The development of a disease from its causes, or its period of incubation. (See below.)

A sleeping in a consecrated place for the purpose of dreaming oracular dreams.

The maintenance (of a living organism, such as microorganisms or a premature baby) in appropriate conditions, such as of temperature, humidity, or atmospheric composition, for growth.

The gradual development in some interior environment, until fully formed; as, the incubation time for developing a new drug may be longer than ten years from its first discovery.

Period of incubation, or Stage of incubation (Med.), the period which elapses between exposure to the causes of an infectious disease and the attack resulting from it; the time during which an infective agent must grow in the body before producing overt symptoms of disease.

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Etymology of 'Incubation'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Incubation" Quotes from Famous Books

... does not go twice to the same nest to deposit her egg. What a curious exception is the case of the cuckoo to the instinctive love of their offspring observable in almost all birds! After the eggs are laid the parent bird has no further trouble with them; no period of incubation to bare the breast of the brooding bird; no anxiety about her young ones, as some idle, wanton lad hunts amongst the trees and bushes, destroys both nest and eggs, or tortures the helpless fledglings! "But, papa," said Willy, "how ...

— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton

... by some psychologists is in direct opposition to this general law that disuse causes deterioration. It is usually stated something like this, that periods of incubation are necessary in acquiring skill, or that letting a function lie fallow results in greater skill at the end of that period, or briefly one learns to skate in summer and swim in winter. To some extent this is true, but as stated it is misleading. ...

— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy

... questions. Olivier would lose heart: he would try not to let it be seen: but he thought he had made a mistake, and that the boy was thoroughly stupid. He could not see the frightful fevered travail in incubation that was going on in the inner depths of the boy's soul. Besides, he was a bad teacher, and was more fitted to sow the good seed at random in the fields than to weed the soil and plow the furrows. Christophe's presence only served to increase ...

— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... the waves, on which it was made to float like a skiff. But as the turbulence of a storm would be likely to cause its destruction, Nature had gifted him with the extraordinary power of stilling the motions of the winds and waves, during the period of incubation. Hence the serene weather that accompanies the summer solstice was supposed to be occasioned by the benign influence of this bird, and the term "halcyon days" was applied to this period. It is remarkable that the fable should ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... where the robin built, the cleft in the branch of the young tree where the chaffinch had reared its dwelling—all rose up clear in his mind's eye, and led him back to the scenes of his boyhood at Callerton and Dewley Burn. The colour and number of the bird's eggs, the period of their incubation, the materials employed by them for the walls and lining of their nests, were described by him so vividly, and illustrated by such graphic anecdotes, that one of the party remarked that, if George Stephenson had not been the greatest engineer of his day, he might have been ...

— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

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