nascency

English

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Latin nāscentia.[1] Doublet of nascence.

Pronunciation

Noun

nascency (countable and uncountable, plural nascencies)

  1. A state of incipiency; a quality of nascence.
    • 1889, William James, James Ward, “The Psychological Theory of Extension”, in Mind, volume 14, number 53, page 108:
      [W]e are, therefore, sure in advance, of being right, if we say of any perception that first it didn't exist, and that then there was a mere suggestion and nascency of it, which grew more definite, until, at last, the thing itself was fully established.
    • 1941, George Ryley Scott, Phallic Worship: A History of Sex and Sex Rites in Relation to the Religions of All Races from Antiquity to the Present Day, London: T. Werner Laurie, page 8:
      Basically the reaction of the animal and the reaction of man are precisely similar. The only difference is that man, by virtue of his greater capacity for cerebral action, is capable of extending and elaborating this basic personification. It may be stated that, in its nascency at any rate, worship (the first stage in the elaboration of a system of religion) exists in the mind of the animal exactly as in the mind of man.

References

  1. ^ “nascency, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.
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