Definition of "incipit" [incipit]

• The beginning or opening words of the text of a medieval manuscript or early printed book. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• ""Christian wisdom," which already emerged from the first reading and the Gospel, offers us the synthesis of this position of Leo XIII -- it is not by chance that it is also the "incipit" of one of his encyclicals."
• "Fixations, Earworms, Jungian Memes incipit vita nova"
• "Below is the full Latin text [AH 55, Nr. 188, with the incipit found in KSB underlined and variations given in parentheses] and the full German text as found in the edition of KSB, 159-62."