incumbrance

noun

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World English Dictionary

encumbrance or incumbrance (ɪnˈkʌmbrəns)

—n
1.	a thing that impedes or is burdensome; hindrance
2.	law a burden or charge upon property, such as a mortgage or lien
3.	rare a dependent person, esp a child

incumbrance or incumbrance

—n

00:10

Incumbrance is always a great word to know.

So is interrobang. Does it mean:

a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.

a scrap or morsel of food left at a meal.

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incumber (ɪnˈkʌmbə)

—vb
	a less common spelling of encumber

in'cumberingly

—*adv*

in'cumbrance

—n

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
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Matching Quote

"This noon his mind was occupied with a law question, and I referred him to my companion, who was a lawyer. It appeared that he had been buying land lately (I think it was a hundred acres), but there was probably an incumbrance to it, somebody else claiming to have bought some grass on it for this year. He wished to know to whom the grass belonged, and was told that if the other man could prove that he bought the grass before he, Polis, bought the land, the former could take it, whether the latter knew it or not. To which he only replied, "Strange!" He went over this several times, fairly sat down to it, with his back to a tree, as if he meant to confine us to this topic henceforth; but as he made no headway, only reached the jumping-off place of his wonder at white men's institutions after each explanation, we let the subject die."

-Henry David Thoreau

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incumbrance

in·cum·brance