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
"One way you can think about how rivers incise long term -- you need to be able to move sediment, and once you cross over some threshold, you can incise the river," Carr said.
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
V. furrow &c. n.; flute, plow; incise, engrave, etch, bite in.
From Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases by Peter Mark Roget
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
Stylistically, those two small children, their flatly painted bodies incised in two-dimensional profile, slide back thousands of years to the African continent and Egyptian art — product of an ancient slave culture.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 1, 2024
That huge horn with its bands of old gold, incised with ancient rimes ... had Mance Rayder lied to him, or was Tormund lying now?
From "A Dance with Dragons" by George R. R. Martin
The scratching alerts us to what will be increasingly vigorous attacks on the canvas surface—scraping, rubbing, incising fine lines—emphasizing the character of her paintings as objects, rather than representations.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 3, 2026
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
We can feel her pushing and pulling, scraping and incising these pictures, as if possessed.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 30, 2018
With an incising awl, he inscribed the leather-hard clay—a simple chrysanthemum design, far cruder than much of the elaborate incision work for which the potters of Ch’ulp’o were known.
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.
