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Meddle vs Encroach - What's the difference?

meddle | encroach |

As verbs the difference between meddle and encroach

is that meddle is (obsolete) to mix (something) with some other substance; to commingle, combine, blend while encroach is (obsolete) to seize, appropriate.

As a noun encroach is

(rare) encroachment.

meddle

English

Verb

(meddl)
  • (obsolete) To mix (something) with some other substance; to commingle, combine, blend.
  • *1590 , Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene , II.i:
  • *:he cut a locke of all their heare, / Which medling with their bloud and earth, he threw / Into the graue.
  • *:
  • *:But after god came to Adam and bad hym knowe his wyf flesshly as nature requyred / Soo lay Adam with his wyf vnder the same tree / and anone the tree whiche was whyte and ful grene as ony grasse and alle that came oute of hit / and in the same tyme that they medled to gyders there was Abel begoten / thus was the tree longe of grene colour
  • *, II.5.1.v:
  • *:Take a ram's head that never meddled with an ewe, cut off at a blow, and the horns only taken away, boil it well, skin and wool together.
  • (senseid)To interfere (in) or (with); to concern oneself with unduly.
  • *Bible, 2 Kings xiv.10:
  • *:Why shouldst thou meddle to thy hurt?
  • *John Locke
  • *:The civil lawyershave meddled in a matter that belongs not to them.
  • (obsolete) To interest or engage oneself; to have to do (with), in a good sense.
  • *Tyndale
  • *:Study to be quiet, and to meddle with your own business.
  • :(Barrow)

    • Derived terms

    * meddlement * meddlesome * meddler

    Anagrams

    *

    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.