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incipit
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thumb|upright=1.2|Decorated incipit page to the Gospel of Matthew, 1120–1140
~9 min read
Encyclopedic overview
14 sectionsContents
- Historical examples
- Sumerian
- Hebrew
- Ancient Greek
- Classical Arabic
- Medieval Europe
- Papal bulls
- Hindu texts
- Modern uses of incipits
- In music
- In computer science
- See also
- Notes
- References
thumb|upright=1.2|Decorated incipit page to the Gospel of Matthew, 1120–1140
The incipit ( ) of a text is the first few words of the text, employed as an identifying label. In a musical composition, an incipit is an initial sequence of notes, having the same purpose. The word incipit comes from Latin and means "it begins". Its counterpart taken from the ending of the text is the explicit (). The unfolding refers to a papyrus scroll. The end is also referred to as desinit, 'it is finished'.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “incipit” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.