Refine this word faster
Cumber
Definitions
- 1 Trouble, distress. obsolete, uncountable
"Fleet foot on the correi, / Sage counsel in cumber, / Red hand in the foray, / How sound is thy slumber!"
- 2 Clipping of cucumber. abbreviation, alt-of, clipping, colloquial
- 3 Something that encumbers; a hindrance, a burden. uncountable
- 1 To slow down; to hinder; to burden; to encumber. dated, transitive
"Why asks he what avails him not in fight, / And would but cumber and retard his flight?"
- 2 restrict (someone or something) so as to make free movement difficult wordnet
Etymology
From Middle English combren, aphetic form of acombren or encombren, borrowed from Old French encombrer, ultimately either from Latin cumulus or Proto-Celtic *kombereti (“to bring together”), from *kom- + *bereti (“to bear”). Cognate with German kümmern (“to take care of”).
From Middle English komber, kumbre, cumbre, combre (“distress; destruction”). Used in 14th century Middle English in the very scarcely attested “destruction” sense but not in common use until the 16th century; at first chiefly Scots, where it is also spelled cummer. Further etymology is uncertain, the term is either: * an aphetic form of encomber, encumbir, encumbre (“trouble; misfortune; harm, ruin”), itself from Old French encombre (“a hindrance, difficulty”), see Etymology 1 and French encombrer for further etymology; or, * cognate with Middle High German kumber (German Kummer), Middle Low German kummer, and Dutch kommer with which it strikingly shares the meaning “trouble, distress”, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *kumbraz (“burden, trouble, sorrow”); or, * a deverbal from cumber.
See also for "cumber"
Next best steps
Mini challenge
Unscramble this word: cumber