0 something that makes it difficult for you to do something:
1 a mortgage or other charge on a property, or the fact of a property having a mortgage, etc.:
2 something that makes it difficult to do things:
Her cancer has not proved to be an encumbrance on her daily life.
We enjoy exploring the city without the encumbrance of a car.
The company has scrapped the encumbrance of fixed production targets.
An electronic machine, in effect, is not a tool given to the musician without encumbrances.
This concept circumscribes the prerogatives and encumbrances of a particular type of social membership, whose scope has generally been established by the nation-state.
Several of our authors suggest ways of preventing or managing this encumbrance of intellectual property.
The encumbrance of private ownership: are we facing a 'tragedy of the anti-commons'?
In other words, they may not have the encumbrance of old-fashioned expectations of the behaviour appropriate for older people.
