cumber

• cumbre (archaic)

From the Middle English combren, borrowed from the second element of Old French encombrer. Cognate with German kümmern (“to take care of”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈkʌmbə/
• Rhymes: -ʌmbə(ɹ)

cumber (third-person singular simple present cumbers, present participle cumbering, simple past and past participle cumbered)

1. (transitive, dated) To slow down; to hinder; to burden.
   • Dryden

     Why asks he what avails him not in fight, / And would but cumber and retard his flight?

   • John Locke

     The multiplying variety of arguments, especially frivolous ones, […] but cumbers the memory.

   • 1825 June 22, [Walter Scott], chapter IV, in Tales of the Crusaders. [...] In Four Volumes, volume I (The Betrothed), Edinburgh: Printed [by James Ballantyne and Co.] for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co., OCLC 5584494, page 71:

     Wounded and overthrown, the Britons continued their resistance, clung round the legs of the Norman steeds, and cumbered their advance; while their brethren, thrusting with pikes, proved every joint and crevice of the plate and mail, or grappling with the men-at-arms, strove to pull them from their horses by main force, or beat them down with their bills and Welch hooks.

   • 1886, Sir Walter Scott, The Fortunes of Nigel. Pub.: Adams & Charles Black, Edinburgh; page 321:

     […] the base villain who murdered this poor defenceless old man, when he had not, by the course of nature, a twelvemonth's life in him, shall not cumber the earth long after him.

   • 1911, Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson:

     Why had he not killed himself long ago? Why cumbered he the earth?

• encumber

• cumberground
• cumbersome
• cumberworld
• cumbrous

• encumber
• encumbrance

• Thesaurus:hinder

• “cumber” in Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary, 2001–2019.

• cumbre, recumb