Definition of "inchoate"

neither a substance perfect, nor a substance inchoate

1614, Walter Ralegh [i.e., Walter Raleigh], The Historie of the World […], London: […] William Stansby for Walter Burre, […], (please specify |book=1 to 5)

It do's indeed perfect and crown thoſe graces which were here inchoate and begun, but no mans converſion ever ſucceeded his being there ...

1677, Richard Allestree, The Art of Contentment, page 187

This appointment is evidenced by an open, unequivocal act, and, being the last act required from the person making it, necessarily excludes the idea of its being, so far as it respects the appointment, an inchoate and incomplete transaction.

1803, Supreme Court of the United States, Marbury v. Madison

It being determined that a constitution should be made for the inchoate government, men were selected by its sponsors, from those at the Illinois Camp Ground, including as many western Cherokees as could be induced to sign it.

1839, Cherokee Constitution

...unfortunately, we have to face inchoate schemes which will demand the utmost jealousy and vigilance of Parliament.

1885, Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, On the Death of General Gordon

The private conception of any breach of law is apt to be inspiriting, for the scheme (while yet inchoate) wears dashing and attractive colours.

1889, Robert Louis Stevenson, Lloyd Osbourne, “The Tribulations of Morris: Part the First”, in The Wrong Box, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., page 85

A youth whose brain glowed like a furnace, whose heart throbbed with tumult of high ambitions, of inchoate desires.

1892, George Gissing, Born In Exile

Very odd and ugly were these beings, as indeed are most beings of a world yet inchoate and rudely fashioned.

1919, H. P. Lovecraft, The Doom That Came to Sarnath

How inutterably sad was the look this fluid inchoate figure of the wolf threw from his beautiful shy eyes.

1928, Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

Guthrie’s inchoate socialist leanings grew into a deep commitment to the labor movement.

2004 March 29, David Hajdu, “Folk Hero”, in The New Yorker

The Met's chairman, Sir Edward Watkin, was also chairman of that company [the Manchester,Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway], which duplicated other railways' routes in an inchoate way between Manchester and Grimsby, and generally stumbled about the north.

2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, page 73

Congress considers the inchoate offenses of attempt and conspiracy, even conspiracy without an overt act, to be just as serious as the federal substantive drug offenses which they contemplate.

2006, United States v. McKenney, 450 F.3d 39 (1st Cir. 2006)