Word.ws English Dictionary

cumbering

cumbering is the present participle and gerund of cumber.

Meaning of cumber

Verb

cumber (third-person singular simple present cumbers, present participle cumbering, simple past and past participle cumbered)

  1. (dated, transitive) To slow down; to hinder; to burden; to encumber.
    • Why asks he what avails him not in fight, / And would but cumber and retard his flight?1717, John Dryden [et al.], “(please specify |book=I to XV)”, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Fifteen Books. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC
    Synonyms:
    encumber

See all 3 meanings of cumber

Questions about cumbering

What is cumbering the present participle and gerund of?
Cumbering is the present participle and gerund of cumber.

Words near cumbering in the dictionary

  1. cumberers
  2. Cumberfan
  3. Cumberfans
  4. cumberground
  5. cumbergrounds
  6. cumbering
  7. Cumberladies
  8. Cumberlady
  9. Cumberland
  10. Cumberland Center
  11. Cumberland County

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cumbering (page history and authors); cumber (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “cumbering.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cumbering. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.