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Encroach vs Intervene - What's the difference?

encroach | intervene |

In lang=en terms the difference between encroach and intervene

is that encroach is to advance gradually beyond due limits while intervene is to interpose; as, to intervene to settle a quarrel; get involved, so as to alter or hinder an action.

As verbs the difference between encroach and intervene

is that encroach is (obsolete) to seize, appropriate while intervene is (ambitransitive) to come between, or to be between, persons or things.

As a noun encroach

is (rare) encroachment.

encroach

English

Verb

(es)
  • (obsolete) to seize, appropriate
  • to intrude unrightfully on someone else's rights or territory
  • * 2005 , .
  • Because change itself would absolutely stay-stable, and again, conversely, stability itself would change, if each of them encroached on the other.
  • to advance gradually beyond due limits
  • Derived terms

    * encroacher * encroachment

    Noun

    (es)
  • (rare) Encroachment.
  • * 1805 , Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ‘What is Life?’:
  • All that we see, all colours of all shade, / By encroach of darkness made?
  • * 2002 , Caroline Winterer, The Culture of Classicism , JHU Press 2002, p. 116:
  • Shorey was among the most vociferous opponents of the encroach of scientism and utilitarianism in education and society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

    intervene

    English

    Verb

  • (ambitransitive) To come between, or to be between, persons or things.
  • The Mediterranean intervenes between Europe and Africa.
  • * De Quincey
  • self-sown woodlands of birch, alder, etc., intervening the different estates
  • To occur, fall, or come between, points of time, or events; as, an instant intervened between the flash and the report; nothing intervened (i.e. between the intention and the execution) to prevent the undertaking.
  • To interpose; as, to intervene to settle a quarrel; get involved, so as to alter or hinder an action
  • (legal) In a suit to which one has not been made a party, to put forward a defense of one's interest in the subject matter.
  • (Abbott)