incise
/ɪnˈsaɪz/verb
incise is a verb meaning “To cut in or into with a sharp instrument; to carve; to engrave” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled I-N-C-I-S-E and has 2 syllables, and it appears about once in every 26 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does incise mean?
verb
- 1
To cut in or into with a sharp instrument; to carve; to engrave.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce incise?
- /ɪnˈsaɪz/
Incise has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-incise.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of incise
- incises present, singular, he/she/it
- incising participle, present
- incised participle, past
- encise
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is incise?
Incise appears about once in every 26 million words in written English, the 154,067th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does incise come from?
From Middle French inciser.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).