Incarnation

How to spell incarnation

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce incarnation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does incarnation mean?

1. nounA person or thing that perfectly embodies a particular quality or idea.
2. nounThe Christian doctrine that God took human form as Jesus Christ.
3. nounA particular bodily life or form, especially one of a series in successive lives or revivals.

Incarnation in a sentence

• The charity's founder was the incarnation of patience and generosity.

• The priest's sermon explained the incarnation in careful theological terms.

• The festival is the latest incarnation of an event that began a century ago.

• Critics called the new mayor the incarnation of reckless ambition.

• The painting depicted the incarnation as a humble birth in a stable.

• According to the legend, the hero returned in a new incarnation to finish the task.

Where does incarnation come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb incarnare, meaning 'to make into flesh', built from the prefix in- ('into') and caro, carnis, the Latin word for 'flesh' or 'meat'. The late Latin noun incarnatio was coined by early Christian writers to describe the central doctrine that God took on human flesh and was born as a man. English adopted it through Old French during the 1300s, at first almost entirely in this religious sense. Over time the meaning broadened to cover any embodiment of a quality or any particular bodily form taken across successive lives. The same fleshy root, caro, still shows up in everyday relatives such as 'carnal', 'carnival', and 'carnage', which is a useful reminder that the tricky middle of the word is spelled 'carn', not 'corn'.

How the word is built

• in- (in, into)
• carn (flesh, from Latin caro, carnis)
• -ation (noun suffix)