cumber-world

See also: cumberworld

English

Noun

cumber-world (plural cumber-worlds)

  1. (obsolete) Alternative form of cumberworld

Middle English

Noun

cumber-world

  1. (derogatory) cumberworld; a useless person or thing; someone who is an encumbrance on the world.
    • c. 1385, Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, lines 279–280:
      I, combre-world, that may of nothyng serve, / But evere dye and nevere fulli sterve.
      (please add an English translation of this quotation)
    • c. 1412, Thomas Hoccleve, A Lament for Chaucer, lines 35–38; republished in Henry Spackman Pancoast, John Duncan Ernst Spaeth, editors, Early English Poems‎, New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1911, page 242:
      Thou followedst sure, this men know well enow, / That cumber-world, that thee, my master slow, / I would were slain! death went too hastily / To run on thee, and rive thy life of thee.
      (please add an English translation of this quotation)
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