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Encroach vs Inroad - What's the difference?

encroach | inroad |

As verbs the difference between encroach and inroad

is that encroach is (obsolete) to seize, appropriate while inroad is (obsolete|transitive) to make an inroad into; to invade.

As nouns the difference between encroach and inroad

is that encroach is (rare) encroachment while inroad is an advance into enemy territory, an incursion, an attempted invasion.

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.

    inroad

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • an advance into enemy territory, an incursion, an attempted invasion
  • * 1776 : Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol 1
    • The brave and active Contsantius delivered Gaul from a very furious inroad of the Alemanni;
  • *1850 , '', ''The present time
  • *:And everywhere the people, or the populace, take their own government upon themselves; and open “kinglessness,” what we call anarchy , […] is everywhere the order of the day. Such was the history, from Baltic to Mediterranean, in Italy, France, Prussia, Austria, from end to end of Europe, in those March days of 1848. Since the destruction of the old Roman Empire by inroad of the Northern Barbarians, I have known nothing similar.
  • * 1910 : G. K. Chesterton, What's Wrong With The World
    • ... our whole great commercial system breaks down. It is breaking down, under the inroad of women who are adopting the unprecedented and impossible course of taking the system seriously and doing it well.
  • (usually plural) progress made toward accomplishing a goal or solving a problem
  • * 1983 : Scarecrow and Mrs. King (TV, episode 1.03)
    • You must have been fairly surprised at Dr. Glaser's inroads into reprogramming the brain.

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • (obsolete) To make an inroad into; to invade.
    • The Saracens conquered Spain, inroaded Aquitaine. — Fuller.

    Anagrams

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