inchoate: just begun, not yet fully formed. The likely image underneath is a plough being hitched.

inchoate (adj.), /ɪnˈkoʊ.ət/ — just begun; only partly in existence; not yet fully formed.

Etymonline dates that sense to the 1530s. The Latin is inchoatus, from inchoare, itself an alteration of an older incohare. Here is the part I like, with the caveat that the trail is not solid: the traditional derivation takes incohare back to cohum, the strap that fastened a plough-beam to an ox yoke. De Vaan's reading is that "to yoke a plough to a team of oxen" slid naturally into "to start work." Etymonline allows a core of truth in that ancient connection while noting that cohum itself is of obscure origin, so this is the probable story rather than a settled one.

I like it anyway, because it puts something physical under a very abstract word. An inchoate plan is not a vague cloud of intention. It is a plough with the animals just being tied on.

Two practical notes. The ch is a hard k, so it is in-KOH-ut, and the -ch- spelling is the later form; the classical shape was incohare.

And it does not mean chaotic, which is the usual misfire. Inchoate says early, not disordered. The cleanest place to see that is law, where an inchoate offence is a real technical category: an attempt, a conspiracy, a crime begun and not completed. Nothing messy about it. Just unfinished.