encroach
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English[edit]
Etymology[edit]
From Middle English encrochen, from Old French encrochier (“to seize”), from Old French en- + croc (“hook”), of Germanic origin. More at crook.
Pronunciation[edit]
Verb[edit]
encroach (third-person singular simple present encroaches, present participle encroaching, simple past and past participle encroached)
- (transitive, obsolete) to seize, appropriate
- (intransitive) to intrude unrightfully on someone else’s rights or territory
- 1579, Immeritô [pseudonym; Edmund Spenser], The Shepheardes Calender: Conteyning Tvvelue Æglogues Proportionable to the Twelue Monethes. Entitled to the Noble and Vertuous Gentleman most Worthy of all Titles both of Learning and Cheualrie M. Philip Sidney, London: Printed by Hugh Singleton, dwelling in Creede Lane neere vnto Ludgate at the signe of the gylden Tunne, and are there to be solde, OCLC 606515406; republished in Francis J[ames] Child, editor, The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser: The Text Carefully Revised, and Illustrated with Notes, Original and Selected by Francis J. Child: Five Volumes in Three, volume III, Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company; The Riverside Press, Cambridge, published 1855, OCLC 793557671, page 406, lines 222–228:
- Now stands the Brere like a lord alone, / Puffed up with pryde and vaine pleasaunce. / But all this glee had no continuaunce: / For eftsones winter gan to approche; / The blustering Boreas did encroche, / And beate upon the solitarie Brere; / For nowe no succoure was seene him nere.
- 2005, Plato, translated by Lesley Brown, Sophist, page 252d:
- Because change itself would absolutely stay-stable, and again, conversely, stability itself would change, if each of them encroached on the other.
- I won't encroach on your time any longer.
- He never allows work to encroach upon his family life.
- Gradually the negative feelings encroached into her work.
- 1579, Immeritô [pseudonym; Edmund Spenser], The Shepheardes Calender: Conteyning Tvvelue Æglogues Proportionable to the Twelue Monethes. Entitled to the Noble and Vertuous Gentleman most Worthy of all Titles both of Learning and Cheualrie M. Philip Sidney, London: Printed by Hugh Singleton, dwelling in Creede Lane neere vnto Ludgate at the signe of the gylden Tunne, and are there to be solde, OCLC 606515406; republished in Francis J[ames] Child, editor, The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser: The Text Carefully Revised, and Illustrated with Notes, Original and Selected by Francis J. Child: Five Volumes in Three, volume III, Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company; The Riverside Press, Cambridge, published 1855, OCLC 793557671, page 406, lines 222–228:
- (intransitive) to advance gradually beyond due limits
Derived terms[edit]
Translations[edit]
to intrude unrightfully on someone else’s rights or territory
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to advance gradually beyond due limits
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Noun[edit]
encroach (plural encroaches)
- (rare) Encroachment.
- 1805, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, What is Life?:
- All that we see, all colours of all shade,
By encroach of darkness made?
- 2002, Caroline Winterer, The Culture of Classicism, JHU Press, published 2002, page 116:
- Shorey was among the most vociferous opponents of the encroach of scientism and utilitarianism in education and society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Translations[edit]
encroachment — see encroachment
Anagrams[edit]
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