encroach — English Dictionary

Verb

1. to seize, appropriate

   Usage

   • Obsolete
   • Transitive

2. To intrude unrightfully on someone else’s rights or territory.

   Usage

   • Intransitive

   Synonyms

   infringepoach

   Examples

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

   More examples (1)

   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.

   Because change itself would absolutely stay-stable, and again, conversely, stability itself would change, if each of them encroached on the other.

   More examples (3)

   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.

3. To advance gradually beyond due limits.

   Usage

   • Intransitive

Noun

1. Encroachment.

   Usage

   • Rare

   Examples

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

   More examples (1)

   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

1. advance beyond the usual limit

   Synonyms

   infringeimpinge

   Broader terms

   advanceprogresspass onmove onmarch ongo on

2. impinge or infringe upon

   Synonyms

   impingeentrenchtrench

   Broader terms

   trespasstake advantage

   Examples

   This impinges on my rights as an individual

   This matter entrenches on other domains