Starting to come into being or to become evident.
Example:
He felt the stirrings of incipient panic as he riffled through the file and realized that the letter had been removed.
An incipient career as an actor in New York tends to involve a lot of waiting on tables while waiting for auditions. Identifying a cancer at its incipient stage may allow its development to be slowed or reversed. An environmental pessimist may speak of the incipient extinction of whales or bald eagles.