ENCOUNTER • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Encounter

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/ɪnkˈaʊntər/ /ɪnkˈaʊnər/ Listen

noun

Encounter n.

A meeting face to face; a running against; a sudden or incidental meeting; an interview. "To shun the encounter of the vulgar crowd."

A meeting, with hostile purpose; hence, a combat; a battle; as, a bloody encounter. "As one for... fierce encounters fit". "To join their dark encounter in mid-air"..

Synonyms: Contest; conflict; fight; combat; assault; rencounter; attack; engagement; onset. See Contest.

verb

Encounter v. t. (past & past part. encountered; pres. part. encountering) To come against face to face; to meet; to confront, either by chance, suddenly, or deliberately; especially, to meet in opposition or with hostile intent; to engage in conflict with; to oppose; to struggle with; as, to encounter a friend in traveling; two armies encounter each other; to encounter obstacles or difficulties, to encounter strong evidence of a truth. "Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoics, encountered him." "I am most fortunate thus accidentally to encounter you."

Encounter v. i. To meet face to face; to have a meeting; to meet, esp. as enemies; to engage in combat; to fight; as, three armies encountered at Waterloo. "I will encounter with Andronicus." "Perception and judgment, employed in the investigation of all truth, have in the first place to encounter with particulars."

See images of 'Encounter'

Etymology of 'Encounter'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Encounter" Quotes from Famous Books

... will not abdicate without a struggle. Day after day he rallies his scattered forces, and night after night pitches his white tents on the hills, and would fain regain his lost ground; but the young prince in every encounter prevails. Slowly and reluctantly the gray old hero retreats up the mountain, till finally the south rain comes in earnest, and in a night he ...

— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... Ahpilus, in all his furious madness, also observed his advantage. Peters had in his possession a very long and keen knife, but, as he afterward said in talking over this incident, he had never yet seen the time when he was compelled to use an artificial weapon in an encounter with a single combatant; and particularly would he never have used a knife, even though his adversary were a maniac, if a maniac without an artificial weapon. Peters saw that Diregus had found Pym, and, as was also the boatman, he and Pym were, of course, ...

— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake

... state occasions. They go; they see; they return fatigued and privately disappointed, with a vague feeling that some one has misled them. But with the arrival later in the afternoon of the vendor of special editions, they begin to be reassured. Under the heading "To-day's Drawing Room," they encounter a description of incidents which they themselves have witnessed. The sweet thought crosses their minds: "Perhaps that was written by the curious woman with eye-glasses who stood near to me;" and by the time ...

— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett

... into the house. The two women graze after him. Then, at once, as it were, draw into themselves, as if preparing for an encounter, and yet seem to expand as if losing the need ...

— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... above them. He had generated an habit of coming and going, as he pleased, without consideration of his host's absences; and latterly, in the early spring—whose caprices in England Rainham was never in a hurry to encounter—the easel and painting tools of the assiduous artist had become an almost constant feature of ...

— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

More quotes...