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[[Incel]], is short for and means, ''''involuntarily celibate'''', a term describing a common life circumstance.  'Involuntarily celibate' is a [[Donnelly Study#Incel is Now a Valid Academic Sociological Term|valid academic sociological term]] popularized in academia by the [[Donnelly Study]], referring to people who would like to have a sexual or romantic partner but can't find one for 6 months or more, and then remain celibate.  The date may seem arbitrary, but there had to be a cutoff point, and [[Denise Donnelly]] chose 6 months as that factored in that some sexually active people go weeks without sex in an established relationship by choice.  The only reason that incels or incelibates use an abbreviated form of the longer term is that "incel" has only two syllables, thus is easier to say. "Incelibate" has four syllables, again easy to say. In contrast, the term  "involuntarily celibate person" has 11 syllables, which is much harder to say. Therefore the term "incel" is to "involuntary celibate" the same thing as what "lb" is to "pound". "Incelibate" is to "involuntarily celibate" the same as what "USA" is to the "United States of America". Just because a longer term is abbreviated doesn't mean that the definition has changed. So in a nutshell, "incel" is simply an abbreviation of the term "involuntarily celibate".