What's the difference between
and
Enter two words to compare and contrast their definitions, origins, and synonyms to better understand how those words are related.

Encroach vs Obtrude - What's the difference?

encroach | obtrude | Related terms |

In intransitive terms the difference between encroach and obtrude

is that encroach is to advance gradually beyond due limits while obtrude is to become apparent in an unwelcome way, to be forcibly imposed; to jut in, to intrude ({{term|on}} or {{term|into}}).

As verbs the difference between encroach and obtrude

is that encroach is to seize, appropriate while obtrude is to proffer (something) by force; to impose (something) {{term|on}} someone or {{term|into}} some area.

As a noun encroach

is 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.

    obtrude

    English

    Verb

    (obtrud)
  • To proffer (something) by force; to impose (something) (on) someone or (into) some area.
  • *1651 , (Thomas Hobbes), Leviathan :
  • *:By which we may see, that they who are not called to Counsell, can have no good Counsell in such cases to obtrude .
  • *1855 , (Elizabeth Gaskell), North and South :
  • *:It was unusual with Margaret to obtrude her own subject of conversation on others; but, in this case, she was so anxious to prevent Mr. Thornton from feeling annoyance at the words he had accidentally overheard, that it was not until she had done speaking that she coloured all over with consciousness [...].
  • *2007 , Andrew Martin, The Guardian , 16 Jul 2007:
  • *:The prospect of people writing PhD theses that obtrude hard facts into the question of whether it's a) grim or b) nice up north is naturally worrying to all those of us who like to shout about those matters in the saloon bars of England.
  • To become apparent in an unwelcome way, to be forcibly imposed; to jut in, to intrude ((on) or (into)).
  • *1853 , , :
  • *:Sometimes I dreamed strangely of disturbed earth, and of hair, still golden and living, obtruded through the coffin-chinks.
  • *1991 , (Roy Jenkins), A Life at the Centre :
  • *:It was not only the police but the palace which obtruded on a home secretary's life.
  • *2010 , Colin Greenland, The Guardian , 7 Aug 2010:
  • *:In such a very chronological book, though, small anachronisms do obtrude .
  • (reflexive) To impose (oneself) on others; to cut in.
  • *1934 , (Winston Churchill), Marlborough: His Life and Times , vol II:
  • *:She obtruded herself upon the Queen; she protested her party views; she asked for petty favours, and attributed the refusals to the influence of Abigail.
  • *2004 , Marc Abrahams, The Guardian , 13 Jan 2004:
  • *:This scarcity of knowledge also obtruded itself in 1998, when three scientists in Wales published a report called "What Sort of Men Take Garlic Preparations?"
  • *2010 , (Christopher Hitchens), Hitch-22 , Atlantic 2011, p. 121:
  • *:As 1968 began to ebb into 1969, however, and as “anticlimax” began to become a real word in my lexicon, another term began to obtrude itself.
  • Anagrams

    * ----