Inca
Americannoun
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Incas
plural
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a member of any of the dominant groups of South American Indian peoples who established an empire in Peru prior to the Spanish conquest.
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a ruler or member of the royal family in the Incan empire.
noun
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a member of a South American Indian people whose great empire centred on Peru lasted from about 1100 ad to the Spanish conquest in the early 1530s and is famed for its complex culture
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the ruler or king of this empire or any member of his family
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the language of the Incas See also Quechua
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of Inca
1585–95; < Spanish < Quechua inka ruler of the Inca state
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
An Australian man has died after falling down a ravine while walking on the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu in Peru, local authorities have said.
From BBC ● May 22, 2026
"Guano was a highly sought-after resource the Incas would have wanted access to, playing an important role in the diplomatic arrangements between the Inca and the Chincha communities," Dr. Bongers said.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 7, 2026
“Crypto use in Venezuela will persist and likely expand in the short term,” said Adam Zarazinski, chief executive officer of the crypto-intelligence firm Inca Digital.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 10, 2026
Fifteen people were injured when two trains crashed head-on Tuesday near the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu, Peru's top tourist attraction, police and train operators said.
From Barron's ● Dec. 30, 2025
The Aztec and Inca Empires were formed by 15th-century conquests, before Europeans arrived, but we know much about their formation from Indian oral histories transcribed by early Spanish settlers.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
Whereas for the Incas the route was a way to impose order, for the Spanish it became a means of extracting resources—another common reason that geographic links are forged.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 10, 2025
“There’s a mystical weirdness about the place that is so cool,” Glasnow said of the ancient stone-walled structures of the Lost City of the Incas.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 27, 2024
From there the Princess will head to Qoricancha, or “The Golden Temple” in Quechua language, considered the most important - and most sacred - temple by the Incas.
From Washington Times ● Nov. 3, 2023
Today, we know that de la Vega’s vision of the Incas was idealized.
From New York Times ● Nov. 1, 2023
Two Native American peoples, the Aztecs and the Incas, ruled over empires with stone tools.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
