||In`cu*nab"u*lum (?), n.; pl. Incunabula (#). [L. incunabula cradle, birthplace, origin. See 1st In-, and Cunabula.] A work of art or of human industry, of an early epoch; especially, a book printed before a. d. 1500.

• A book, single sheet, or image that was printed — not handwritten — before the year 1501 in Europe.
       *2004: Something about him reminded me of one of those figures from old-fashioned playing cards or the sort used by fortune-tellers, a print straight from the pages of an incunabulum: his presence was both funereal and incandescent, like a curse dressed in its Sunday best. — Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind, tr. Luisa Graves