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Vinony

encroach

verb

  1. get closer to, menacingly
L270116 on Wikidata ↗

Wiktionary

Pronunciation: /ɪŋˈkɹəʊtʃ/ / /ɛŋˈkɹəʊtʃ/

noun

Etymology: From Middle English encrochen, from Old French encrochier (“to seize”), from Old French en- + croc (“hook”), of Germanic origin. More at crook.

  1. Encroachment.

    “All that we see, all colours of all shade, By encroach of darkness made?”

    “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.”

verb

Etymology: From Middle English encrochen, from Old French encrochier (“to seize”), from Old French en- + croc (“hook”), of Germanic origin. More at crook.

  1. to seize, appropriate
  2. To intrude unrightfully on someone else’s rights or territory.

    “[D]rowſie drouping Age, / incroaching on apace, / With penſiue Plough will raze your hue / and Beauties beames deface.”

    “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.”

  3. To advance gradually beyond due limits.