Word
Incunable
A European work printed with movable metal type before 1501, during the first decades of the press
Examples
The Gutenberg Bible, printed in Mainz around 1455, is the most famous incunable.
Many incunables left blank spaces for initials that artists later painted by hand.
Origin
From Latin incunabula, “swaddling clothes” or “cradle.” Seventeenth-century bibliographers used it for the infancy of European printing and set 1500 as the cutoff. The date is a convention, not a technological boundary.
How it connects
The word for printing's cradle years, when the press still dressed like a manuscript.
This word appeared in When print still looked handwritten, the Involves connection for August 9, 2026, which asked: Why does a new medium begin by copying the old one?
Check yourself
Which work is an incunable?
A European book printed with movable metal type before 1501.. Right. Printed with movable metal type, and before 1501: the conventional cradle of European printing.
What the sources establish
Incunabula, from the Latin for swaddling clothes or cradle, names European books printed with movable type before 1501.
Sources
Incunabula (Encyclopaedia Britannica), Definition; books printed before 1501; early printed appearance