Someone recently asked about the word inchoate, and I had to look up its definition: it means “just begun” or “underdeveloped”. In legal terms, an inchoate crime is preparing to commit another crime. This word was borrowed in the sixteenth century from Latin inchoatus, the past participle of the rare verb inchoare, which meant “to begin” and is a variation of incohare (possibly influenced by the word chaos). Incohare was made up of the prefix in-, meaning “in” (from Proto-Indo-European en), and the root cohum, which likely referred to a strap connecting a pole to an oxen’s yoke, as attaching the cohum was essential for work to start. This root is traced back to Proto-Indo-European kagyom, meaning “enclosure”.
