cumber – English noun declension

English noun forms of cumber

Noun: cumber
Singularcumber
Pluralcumbers

Sample Sentences

  • Fleet foot on the correi, / Sage counsel in cumber, / Red hand in the foray, / How sound is thy slumber! [1810, The Lady of the Lake, Walter Scott, 3.XVI:]

Etymology

1. From Middle English komber, kumbre, cumbre, combre (“distress; destruction”). Used in 14th century Middle English in the very scarcely attested “destruction” sense but not in common use until the 16th century; at first chiefly Scots, where it is also spelled cummer. Further etymology is uncertain, the term is either:
2. * an aphetic form of encomber, encumbir, encumbre (“trouble; misfortune; harm, ruin”), itself from Old French encombre (“a hindrance, difficulty”), see Etymology 1 and French encombrer for further etymology; or,
3. * cognate with Middle High German kumber (German Kummer), Middle Low German kummer, and Dutch kommer with which it strikingly shares the meaning “trouble, distress”, ultimately from Proto-West Germanic *kumbr (“burden, trouble, sorrow”); or,
4. * a deverbal from cumber. See: Middle English Nouns 'komber', German Nouns 'Kummer', Dutch Nouns 'kommer'.

Verbs referencing "cumber"

German Nouns Kummer, Italian Nouns ingombro.