Talk:encumbrance
Latest comment: 1 year ago by Sgconlaw in topic RFM discussion: May 2023
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Choose the most common, make other alt form Tbilsi Fin (talk) 16:14, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
- Fascinating: Ngrams says in- was the more common form until about 1925. These days, though, it's definitely en- so I've merged the content to there. - -sche (discuss) 19:20, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
- @-sche I don't quite agree with this: the main form of the common meaning ("something that encumbers") should be at encumbrance, but the main form of the legal meaning ("an interest, right, burden, or liability attached to a title of land") should be at incumbrance. Compare seise, for which seize is an alt form only for the legal meaning.
- For what it's worth, both terms are directly relevant to my day job (in property law), so I'm very familiar with their use. Theknightwho (talk) 19:25, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
- Hmm, OK, we could split the content between the entries, each sense on its most common spelling, and each defining itself as an alternative spelling/form of the other. It's noticeable (I can't decide if it's unfortunate/annoying, or interesting) how often English words have this issue, one sense being more common (or even exclusive) to one spelling, e.g. blacksnake vs black snake, besague vs besagew, sike (ditch) vs syke (in heraldry) (vs psych the interjection), or to one form (e.g. egoist vs egotist). - -sche (discuss) 19:50, 5 May 2023 (UTC)