Word of the Day

: August 15, 2024

encumber

verb in-KUM-ber

What It Means

Someone or something that is encumbered is burdened or weighed down (as in “tourists encumbered by heavy luggage”) or hindered (as in “negotiations encumbered by a lack of trust”).

// The children found it difficult to climb down the river's steep embankment, encumbered as they were by inner tubes and towels.

See the entry >

encumber in Context

“White House stationery is not encumbered by street data or zip code. It states, wonderfully and airily, the most intimidating return address in the world: The White House.” — David Lipsky, The Parrot and the Igloo: Climate and the Science of Denial, 2023

Did You Know?

“I can’t help you with your troubles / If you won’t help with mine,” the workingman protagonist tells his companion Melinda in “Cumberland Blues” (a song by Grateful Dead), encumbered by indecision over whether or not to keep his dead-end job. Does he stay or does he go? To be encumbered is to be held back, weighed down, overburdened. One can be encumbered physically (as by a heavy load or severe weather) or figuratively (as by, well, the blues). Encumber traces back to the Middle French noun combre, which referred to a dam or weir constructed in the bed of a river to hold back fish or protect the banks. The notion of stoppage or blockage embedded in combre led to the verb encombre (“to obstruct, burden”) and further downstream to not only the English verb encumber, but adjectives cumbersome and cumbrous, both used to describe things that can slow one down. (Note, however, that the place name Cumberland—referring originally to a former county of northwestern England and used in many U.S. and Canadian locales—comes not from combre, but rather the Latin designation Cumbria, in turn was influenced by the Welsh Cymry.)