Encroach vs Transgress - What's the difference?

encroach | transgress | Related terms |

As verbs the difference between encroach and transgress

is that encroach is to seize, appropriate while transgress is to exceed or overstep some limit or boundary.

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.

transgress

English

Verb

(es)

To exceed or overstep some limit or boundary.

* Dryden

surpassing common faith, transgressing nature's law

To act in violation of some law.

* Milton

For man will hearken to his glozing lies, / And easily transgress the sole command.

To commit an offense; to sin.

* Beaumont and Fletcher

Why give you peace to this imperate beast / That hath so long transgressed you?

(of the sea) To spread over land along a shoreline; to inundate.