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To encumber or load, especially with something that impedes motion; to hamper. The winds of birds were clogged with ace and snow. Dryden.

The light spongy pulp of the fruit of the bitter cucumber (Citrullus, or Cucumis, colocynthis), an Asiatic plant allied to the watermelon; coloquintida. It comes in white balls, is intensely bitter, and a powerful cathartic. Called also bitter apple, bitter cucumber, bitter gourd.

To cumber. [Obs.] Spenser.

A small, inclosed field, adjoining a house; a small farm. A few small crofts of stone-encumbered ground. Wordsworth.

To fill by pressing or thronging together; hence, to encumber by excess of numbers or quantity. The balconies and verandas were crowded with spectators, anxious to behold their future sovereign. Prescott.

Having the form of a cucumber; having the form of a cylinder tapered and rounded at the ends, and either straight or curved.

A genus of plants including the cucumber, melon, and same kinds of gourds.

Of, pertaining to, or resembling, a family of plants of which the cucumber, melon, and gourd are common examples.

Pertaining to Cumberland, England, or to a system of rocks found there. Cumbrian system (Geol.), the slate or graywacke system of rocks, now included in the Cambrian or Silurian system; -- so called because most prominent at Cumberland.

d of a burden; to free from a load borne or from something oppressive; to unload; to disencumber; to relieve. He did it to disburden a conscience. Feltham. My mediations . . . will, I hope, be more calm, being thus disburdened. Hammond.

plants consisting of the single species Ecballium agreste (or Elaterium), the squirting cucumber. Its fruit, when ripe, bursts and violently ejects its seeds, together with a mucilaginous juice, from which elaterium, a powerful cathartic medicine, is prepared.

The active principle of elaterium, being found in the juice of the wild or squirting cucumber (Ecballium agreste, formerly Motordica Elaterium) and other related species. It is extracted as a bitter, white, crystalline substance, which is a violent purgative.

yellowish or greenish cakes, as the dried residue of the juice of the wild or squirting cucumber (Ecballium agreste, formerly called Momordica Elaterium).

That which lengthens out; continuation. May not the mountains of Westmoreland and Cumberland be considered as elongations of these two chains Pinkerton.

To involve in difficulties concerning money matters; to incumber with debt; to beset with urgent claims or demands; -- said of a person or his affairs; as, a man or his business is embarrassed when he can not meet his pecuniary engagements.

See Encumber. [Obs.]

That which encumbers; a burden which impedes action, or renders it difficult and laborious; a clog; an impediment. See Incumbrance.

cess; as, to extract an essence. Cf. Abstract, v. t., 6. Sunbeams may be extracted from cucumbers, but the process is tedious.

Free from obstacles or hindrances; unobstructed; unincumbered; open; direct; -- said of a road, passage, etc.; as, a fair mark; in fair sight; a fair view. The caliphs obtained a mighty empire, which was in a fair way to have enlarged. Sir W. Raleigh.

as a person may have from time to time, leaving him more or less free to dispose of or encumber them as if no such charge or lien existed.