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encumber
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  • And the west, encumbered by crippling alliances, and burdened with a morality too rigid to accommodate itself to the swing of events, must . . . eventually . . . fall.  (source)
    encumbered = hindered (made less able to move freely)
  • In a word, why did he abandon four thousand francs in gold to encumber himself with a bundle of linen?  (source)
    encumber = hinder (weigh down)
  • Of course, like all interrogation of the universe, this line of inquiry inevitably reduces us to asking what it means to be human and whether—to borrow a phrase from the angst-encumbered sixteen-year-olds you no doubt revile—there is a point to it all.†  (source)
    encumbered = hindered
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  • "We do not want to be encumbered by these just now," he said, pulling out his wand again.†  (source)
    encumbered = hindered
  • Here, drifting in almost total silence, with no scents other than the singed odor of the raft, no flavors on his tongue, nothing moving but the slow procession of shark fins, every vista empty save water and sky, his time unvaried and unbroken, his mind was freed of an encumbrance that civilization had imposed on it.†  (source)
    encumbrance = something that hinders
  • At long last he was unencumbered, emancipated from the stifling world of his parents and peers, a world of abstraction and security and material excess, a world in which he felt grievously cut off from the raw throb of existence.†  (source)
    unencumbered = not hindered
    standard prefix: The prefix "un-" in unencumbered means not and reverses the meaning of encumbered. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
  • The jacket would only encumber his movements.†  (source)
  • No one expected us to be geniuses, and it would be conferring no favours if we were, but there was surely a minimum, even for girls: we would be nothing but encumbrances to any man foolish enough to marry us unless we were made to pull up our socks.†  (source)
    encumbrances = things that hinder
  • But somewhere, twenty seconds, ten seconds ago, the last glue crumbled, the last bolt of life fell free, and the mummy-doll, the Erector-set grotesque disencumbered itself in smoke puffs and November leaflets, a broadcast of mortality along the wind.†  (source)
    disencumbered = released from difficulty or entanglement
    standard prefix: The prefix "dis-" in disencumbered reverses the meaning of encumbered. This is the same pattern as seen in words like disagree, disconnect, and disappear.
  • WIZARDS (half chorus) Like house-encumber'd Snail we creep; While far ahead the women keep, For when to the devil's house we speed, By a thousand steps they take the lead.†  (source)
  • A child encumbers a fugitive; perhaps, on perceiving it was still alive, he had thrown it into the river.†  (source)
    encumbers = hinders
  • He's intentionally lost that huge baggage, those encumbering remnants of blood and flesh, and because of this he carries no memory of a house, no memory of a land, he seems to have emerged from nowhere.†  (source)
    encumbering = hindering
  • Then I: "If new laws have not quite destroy'd Memory and use of that sweet song of love, That while all my cares had power to 'swage; Please thee with it a little to console My spirit, that incumber'd with its frame, Travelling so far, of pain is overcome."†  (source)
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