incubator

From incubate +‎ -or.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈɪn.kjuːˌbeɪ.tə(ɹ)/
• (US) IPA^(key): [ˈɪn.kjuːˌbeɪ.ɾɚ]
• (General Australian) IPA^(key): [ˈɪn.kjuːˌbeɪ.ɾə(ɹ)]

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• Rhymes: -eɪtə(ɹ)

incubator (plural incubators)

1. (chemistry) Any apparatus used to maintain environmental conditions suitable for a reaction.
2. (medicine) An apparatus used to maintain environmental conditions suitable for a newborn baby.

   Synonym: brooder

3. An apparatus used to maintain environmental conditions suitable for the hatching of eggs.

   Synonym: brooder

4. A place to maintain the culturing of bacteria at a steady temperature.
5. (business) A support programme for the development of entrepreneurial companies.
   • 2006, Philip N. Cooke, Creative Industries in Wales: Potential and Pitfalls, page 34:

     So the question that is commonly asked is, why put a media incubator in a media desert and have it managed by a civil servant? This gets to the heart of the institutional support problem in Wales.

   • 2014 March 10, Cory Doctorow, “The slow death of Silicon Roundabout”, in The Guardian‎, →ISSN:

     Tech City is very big on "incubators" – places where startups are supposed to grow out of a collection of adjacent desks in a huge barracks of other adjacent desks – and on luring big firms to the East End of London.

Borrowed from French incubateur. By surface analysis, incuba +‎ -tor.

• IPA^(key): /in.ku.baˈtor/

incubator n (plural incubatoare)

1. incubator