ingressive

Ingressive is an adjective and noun derived from the Latin ingressus, meaning entering. It denotes movement into or inward flow and is often paired with egresive, which denotes outward flow. The term can apply to physical processes, such as air or fluid entering a system, as well as to more abstract developments characterized by inward movement or intake.

In linguistics, ingressive has two principal senses. One describes an airstream mechanism in speech, where air moves inward during articulation as opposed to the more common outward (egressive) pulmonic flow. True ingressive phonation or airstream is uncommon and its existence as a phonemic feature is a matter of debate in some languages, with reports limited to particular contexts or experimental observations. The other sense concerns ingressive aspect, a grammatical category that marks the onset or initiation of an action or state, often conveying something like “begin to” or “the onset of.” Typologists study how languages encode initiation, onset, or onset-like phases, noting cross-linguistic variation in form and duration.

Beyond linguistics, ingressive describes inward movement in other fields, such as systems engineering, ventilation, or fluid dynamics, where inward flow into a region or component is contrasted with outward flow. Overall, ingressive is a versatile term used to describe inward movement or intake across technical and scholarly contexts, with specific meanings depending on discipline.