inchoate

neither a substance perfect, nor a substance inchoate

The Met's chairman, Sir Edward Watkin, was also chairman of that company [the Manchester,Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway], which duplicated other railways' routes in an inchoate way between Manchester and Grimsby, and generally stumbled about the north.

Congress considers the inchoate offenses of attempt and conspiracy, even conspiracy without an overt act, to be just as serious as the federal substantive drug offenses which they contemplate.