cumber

verb

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?”

   “The multiplying variety of arguments, especially frivolous ones, […] but cumbers the memory.”

   “Wounded and overthrown, the Britons continued their resistance, clung round the legs of the Norman steeds, and cumbered their advance; while their brethren, thrusting with pikes, proved every joint and crevice of the plate and mail, or grappling with the men-at-arms, strove to pull them from their horses by main force, or beat them down with their bills and Welch hooks.”

   “[…] the base villain who murdered this poor defenceless old man, when he had not, by the course of nature, a twelvemonth's life in him, shall not cumber the earth long after him.”

   “[T]hese people, whose name, much as I would like to express my gratitude to them, I may not even give here, nevertheless cumbered themselves with me, sheltered me and protected me from myself.”

noun

1. (obsolete, uncountable)Trouble, distress.

   “Fleet foot on the correi, / Sage counsel in cumber, / Red hand in the foray, / How sound is thy slumber!”

2. (uncountable)Something that encumbers; a hindrance, a burden.
3. (abbreviation, alt-of, clipping, colloquial)Clipping of cucumber.