incur
Formsincurs, incurring, incurred
- 1To bring something unpleasant or harmful upon oneself, or to become liable to it, through one's own actions.
By missing the deadline, the company will incur significant penalties.
Travelers who change their tickets often incur extra charges.
Similarsuffer, face, sustain, attract
Note
The everyday sense carries the whole family's history: Middle English incurren, through Anglo-Norman and Old French, from Latin incurrere, "to run into." What you incur, you run into by your own doing: a debt, a penalty, calamity. Its near neighbor is contract, as in contracting debts. Dakyns's 1891 translation of Xenophon's Hellenica pairs it with inflict, warning that the angry master may incur worse evil than he inflicts.
- 2To make someone, or oneself, liable or subject to something such as a cost, duty, or penalty.
Businesses that delay filing incur liability for steep late fees.
The directors personally incurred the obligations arising from the failed merger.
Similaroccasion
Oppositeavoid
Note
In law and accounting, the subject is often the act rather than the person: a neglect of duty incurs a penalty, and a late filing incurs a fee. Older English could also name the person who suffers, as in Chapman, Jonson and Marston's Eastward Ho (1605): "lest you incur me much more damage." That pattern now sounds strange. Entail and occasion are the safer choices when an act brings a burden onto someone.
- 3To enter or pass into a place or region.
The pilgrims incurred the mountain pass before the snows came.
Merchants who incur foreign lands must heed local customs.
Note
Closest to the Latin picture of running into something, this sense meant physically entering a place. It is obsolete. A modern reader meeting "incurred the mountain pass" will hear the bringing-on-oneself sense instead. In present-day writing, use enter or pass into, and treat this sense as something to recognize in older texts.
Less common meaning
- 4To fall within a period or scope, to come to pass, or to run into danger.
Note
Without an object, the verb once meant much what occur means now. Something incurred when it fell within a period or came to pass, and a traveler incurred when running into danger. The use is obsolete. Modern readers expect an object after incur, so "whatever misfortunes incurred" now looks like a passive or a slip, not "whatever happened."
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Origin
It comes from Middle English "incurren", borrowed through Anglo-Norman "encurir" and Old French "encorre", from Latin "incurrere".