inchoate
in-co-ate
adjective
At an early stage, and therefore underdeveloped and imperfect
Ideas for WOTW were thin on the ground this week, dear readers, so I’ve had to just pick a moderately fancy word almost at random. I attempted a new crossword at the weekend which provided some fodder, but words like ‘lapidation’,‘sesquicentennial’ and ‘diverticula’ are rather limited in their application.
Anyway, during the course of some meeting or other last week I had cause to describe some system or other as being ‘inchoate’, meaning that the system was new and all the creases hadn’t quite been ironed out of it yet. A more professional word than some that could have sprung to mind in the circumstances, at any rate.
‘Inchoate’ is a straightforward borrowing from Latin ‘incohare’ which means ‘to begin’.