encroach means encroachment. It carries an Arena rating of 1822, earned across 85 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, encroach ranks #111 of 17,143 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words, #155 of 17,142 for Most Ingenious Words, #532 of 17,134 for Most Malleable Words, #1,078 of 17,126 for Most Elegant Words.
encroach is pronounced /ɪŋˈkɹəʊtʃ/.
Why “encroach” is a great word
ENCROACH — [Verb] To intrude gradually or stealthily on the property, territory, or rights of another. From Middle English encrochen, from Old French encrochier (“to seize, catch hold of”), from en- (“in, on”) + croc (“hook”), of Germanic origin (compare crook). First recorded in English 1275–1325. Unlike “invade,” which suggests a sudden, martial breach, or “trespass,” which marks a specific legal transgression, “encroach” describes the slow, patient crime of accretion. It is the ivy’s tendril finding a crack in the garden wall, the tide imperceptibly redrawing the shoreline, or a meeting quietly annexing an entire afternoon. This is the quiet tyranny of the inevitable, a theft of ground performed not with a bang but with a silent, creeping hook.
Etymology
From Middle English encrochen, from Old French encrochier (“to seize”), from Old French en- + croc (“hook”), of Germanic origin. More at crook.
noun
- Encroachment.e.g.“All that we see, all colours of all shade,
By encroach of darkness made?” — 1805, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, What is Life?:
verb
- to seize, appropriate
- To intrude unrightfully on someone else’s rights or territory.
- To advance gradually beyond due limits.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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