Word of the Day

Monday January 11, 2010

encumbrance [en-KUHM-brun(t)s]

noun

A burden or impediment.
A charge against property, as a lien, mortgage or other financial claim.
A burden which impedes action; an impediment.
A charge against property, as a lien or mortgage or other financial claim.

"Seeing that we can't get around that encumbrance, (legislators) introduced legislation that we will now ask for certification under penalty of law to those wholesalers that sell without collecting taxes. That's in simple (terms) what the bill does. This is a new approach and we hope this will be an effective approach to solve this problem."

Gale Courey Toensing, "Cigarette tax wars continue", McClatchy - Tribune Business News, Dec 30, 2009
Ryan Bingham's life is upside down in "Up in the Air." Last year, he spent 322 days on the road, which meant 43 "miserable days at home." Ryan (George Clooney) is a corporate downsizer who travels constantly and whose apartment looks as though no one lives there, which is almost true. He is the opposite of a hoarder: The more time-wasters, possessions, encumbrances and people he sheds, the better.

Barbara Vancheri, "'UP IN THE AIR' IS A WEIGHTY, SMART TALE", Pittsburgh Post - Gazette, Dec 23, 2009
And now that he was in easy circumstances, a rising man, he considered women almost as encumbrances to the world, with whom a man had better have as little to do as possible.

Elizabeth Gaskell (1810 - 1865) An English novelist and short story writer. Victorian Short Stories, Stories Of Successful Marriages
She was dating Benjamin Bratt, he was married. But this is what lawyers are for; both of those encumbrances were worked out and they wed in 2002.

Linda Barnard, "When big-screen couples hook up in real life", Toronto Star, Jul 2, 2011
For decades honour as a driving force for any behaviour at all has been considered a retrograde encumbrance to social progress. Cultural changes seem to have vindicated this view, for Western women's control of their own bodies is now effectively absolute, while manly courage -apart from pious encomiums to male victims in the protective professions: dead soldiers, police and firefighters -is mocked or ignored.

Barbara Kay, "Desperate for acceptance", National Post, Jun 22, 2011

Origin of the Word

Encumbrance, approximately 1400, derives from Old French encombrance, from encombrer "to block up," from Late Latin incombrare, from in- "in" + combrus "barricade, obstacle."