encroach

Encroachment.

Noun

Encroachment.
- All that we see, all colours of all shade, By encroach of darkness made? - 1805, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, What is Life?:
- 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. - 2002, Caroline Winterer, The Culture of...

From Middle English encrochen, from Old French encrochier (“to seize”), from Old French en- + croc (“hook”), of Germanic origin. More at crook.

to seize, appropriate
To intrude unrightfully on someone else’s rights or territory.
- [D]rowſie drouping Age, / incroaching on apace, / With penſiue Plough will raze your hue / and Beauties beames deface. - 1567, George Turbervil[l]e, “The Louer Exhorteth His Ladie to Take Time, while Time is”, in...
- Now stands the Brere like a lord alone, / Puffed up with pryde and vaine pleasaunce. / But all this glee had no continuaunce: / For eftsones winter gan to approche; / The blustering Boreas did encroche, / And beate upon...
- Because change itself would absolutely stay-stable, and again, conversely, stability itself would change, if each of them encroached on the other. - 2005, Plato, translated by Lesley Brown, Sophist, page 252d:
Synonyms: infringe
To advance gradually beyond due limits.