Meaning of Incumbent | Babel Free

Definitions

1. The current holder of an office or title; (specifically, Christianity) the holder of an ecclesiastical benefice.
2. A holder of a position as supplier to a market or market segment that allows the holder to earn above-normal profits.

Equivalents

Examples

“He has always remained friendly to me, though before his promotion, when he was an incumbent of this diocese, we had a little controversy about the Bible Society.”

“But if they had waited about the store to see what would happen when he arrived who until last night anyway must have still believed himself the incumbent, they were disappointed. […] A few days later they learned that the new smith was living in the house […]”

“Mr [Barack] Obama's problems were partly structural. An incumbent must defend the realities and compromises of government, while a challenger is freer to promise the earth, details to follow. Mr Obama's odd solution was to play both incumbent and challenger, jumping from a defence of his record to indignation at such ills as over-crowded classrooms and tax breaks for big oil companies.”

“Just as interest grew under previous incumbent-but-one Grant Shapps, so interest could wane under new Transport Secretary Mark Harper.”

“But the prospect of a Presidential election as a contest of the ancients is not a heartening one, and the anxieties it provokes cannot be dismissed as ageism. What are younger people, especially, to make of a political culture in which incumbents cling so tenaciously to their seats? The median age for senators is now around sixty-five. Mitt Romney, announcing his retirement, at the age of seventy-six, wasn't wrong to declare that it is time for a new generation of leaders to take the helm.”

“American capitalism is becoming like its European cousin: established firms with the scale and scope to deal with a growing thicket of regulations are doing well, but new companies are withering on the vine or selling themselves to incumbents.”

CEFR level