What is "encumbrance"

Usage examples of "encumbrance".

Besides their arms, which the legionaries scarcely considered as an encumbrance, they were laden with their kitchen furniture, the instruments of fortification, and the provision of many days.

And if Comus had played his cards well and transformed himself from an encumbrance into a son with wealth at his command, the tragedy which she saw looming in front of her might have been avoided or at the worst whittled down to easily bearable proportions.

Her uncle Malachi had seemed to have a strong liking for her at one time, but of late years his delusions had gained upon him, and under their influence he seemed to regard her as an encumbrance and an extravagance.

No one expected us to be geniuses, and it would be conferring no favours if we were, but there was surely a minimum, even for girls: we would be nothing but encumbrances to any man foolish enough to marry us unless we were made to pull up our socks.

The more he contemplated her character, the more difficult the conquest seemed to be: he therefore altered his plan, and resolved to carry on his operations under the shelter of honourable proposals, foreseeing that a wife of her qualifications, if properly managed, would turn greatly to the account of the husband, or, if her virtue should prove refractory, that he could at any time rid himself of the encumbrance, by decamping without beat of drum, after he should be cloyed with possession.

That small but intrepid group of men so full of enthusiasm in 1945, certain that their far-reaching vision for a truly democratized Japan, free from feudal encumbrances, was the correct choice for the country.

Its utility was grievously impaired, it having been muchly damaged on the Alaria, and he feared, too, that on this world it would constitute little more than a clumsy, weighty encumbrance.

Whether it was arrested development, the desire to be free of such an encumbrance, or a matter of sudden enlightenment based on all that I had experienced in recent years, growing slowly within me, granting me a more mature view of the onerous role of monarch apart from its moments of glory, I do not know.

On the hilltop sat a more fanciful machine, Ornithopter Number Three, the product of heavy mental, physical, and financial investment, the fulcrum upon which these very grounds had been leveraged, the culmination of years of work and countless dreams of escaping Earthly encumbrances.

Then he would crawl back in his bag, be still for a time, curse abruptly, fling off encumbrances, and repeat the process.

You on earth have unwittingly felt its distant presence - you who without knowing idly gave the blinking beacon the name of Algol, the Demon-Star It is to meet and conquer the oppressor that I have vainly striven for eons, held back by bodily encumbrances.

But pride, like so many other emotions, seemed an encumbrance to the higher consciousness of the New People and interfered with their more efficient thought patterns.

Gradually his kickings subsided as he realized he could not relieve himself of the encumbrances.

I suppose that after Smallwood had gone far enough to consider that we would never be able to reach that point, he had cut loose dogs and dog-sledge as a needless encumbrance - but not before he had severed all the traces attaching the dogs to the sledge and, I noticed grimly, removed all the wraps and the magnetic compass that had been there.

She seemed to be lightheartedly free of her encumbrances as she heaved and pitched on the quartering sea.