All 4 Uses of
encumber
in
A Thousand Acres
- A mile to the east, you could see three silos that marked the northeastern corner, and if you raked your gaze from the silos to the house and barn, then back again, you would take in the immensity of the piece of land my father owned, six hundred forty acres, a whole section, paid for, no encumbrances, as flat and fertile, black, friable, and exposed as any piece of land on the face of the earth.†
p. 4.0encumbrances = things that hinder
- Said my father had engineered it all, to get a whole farm for the taxes and something over, a fee, you might call it, for the disposal of the encumbering family.†
p. 134.9encumbering = hindering
- When we split the farm, I took on the whole loan for the buildings, since they were on my land, so she was pretty unencumbered.†
p. 340.2 *unencumbered = not hinderedstandard 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.
- It's too encumbered with debt.†
p. 353.8encumbered = hindered
Definition:
hinder (make more difficult, or less valuable, hold back, or weigh down)