verb
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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incisesimple
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incisessimple
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have incisedperfect
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has incisedperfect
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am incisingprogressive
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are incisingprogressive
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is incisingprogressive
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have been incisingperfect progressive
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has been incisingperfect progressive
Past
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incisedsimple
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had incisedperfect
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was incisingprogressive
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were incisingprogressive
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had been incisingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of incise
First recorded in 1535–45; from Latin incīsus, past participle of incīdere “to carve, cut into,” equivalent to in- “in” in- 2 + cīd- “to cut” + -tus past participle suffix, with -dt- becoming -s-
Explanation
To incise is to carve or cut into something. You might incise your initials into the old oak tree in your backyard. When you incise something, you carve it, often as a way of decorating it. Your grandfather might incise his beloved walking stick with the shapes of birds and trees, for example. It's more common to see this word in its adjective form, incised, but you can use it to mean "cut into a surface," or even "make a surgical cut." The Latin root is incidere, "to cut into or cut through."
Vocabulary lists containing incise
Beowulf
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Chop Chop: Synonyms for "Cut"
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cis, cise
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
We see how the form of a finial was generated by the progressive subdivision of a square, precisely the same process by which the mason would incise and cut his stone.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 27, 2026
During high flows after storms, these boulders may be fully mobile, and as they move, they help incise the river.
From Science Daily ● Dec. 15, 2023
“These linear features mean the river is going to form in the same place every year, allowing the water to incise deeper,” Boghosian says.
From Scientific American ● Apr. 20, 2022
The local artist uses a compass to incise tightly arrayed complementary lines into large sheets of black-painted plaster topped with glistening layers of graphite and varnish; the resulting pieces appear metallic and machine-tooled.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 23, 2021
It is usually sufficient to incise the periosteum, but when the disease occurs in a rib it may be necessary to resect a portion of bone.
From Manual of Surgery Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. by Alexis Thomson
It’s just that the artist, a Zenith regular, now incises woodcut-like runes into their bodies.
From Washington Post
The Etruscans are also known for their bucchero ceramics, pottery they made with an inventive process that turns red clay into glossy black pieces, which they sometimes incised.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 18, 2026
One intriguing discovery is a deep channel incised in Antarctica's bed in an area called the Maud Subglacial Basin.
From BBC ● Jan. 15, 2026
They found that the Martian valleys' branching angles "are more similar to terrestrial valley networks incised by overland flow, than valley networks incised by re-emerging groundwater flow."
From Salon ● May 16, 2025
Carved from wood as a durable, 3-foot-tall, totem-like column, it was then wrapped in linen, covered with smooth plaster and incised and painted.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 1, 2024
Different hues blended into one another where the glaze pooled thickly in the crevices or glossed sheer on the raised surfaces of an incised design.
From "A Single Shard" by Linda Sue Park
They settled in Philadelphia and, as a teenager, he learned engraving and earned a living incising designs for silverware firms—no doubt honing his talent for detail.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 28, 2025
Meyers’s and Price’s styles emphasize tight detail — Meyers often drawing undulating motifs with ink and Price incising abstract photographs with an X-ACTO knife.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 27, 2020
He extended the idea to works on—or, rather, in—paper, puncturing and incising it from behind.
From The New Yorker ● Jan. 28, 2019
Coinciding with an exhibition of Tintoretto drawings at the Morgan Library & Museum, this painting has Tintoretto’s signature dramatic lighting, but with modern details like incising done with the stick-end of the paintbrush.
From New York Times ● Oct. 25, 2018
Min and the other potters continued throwing pots, incising them with designs, glazing, firing, rejecting some vessels and keeping others.
From "A Single Shard" by Linda Sue Park
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
