encounter

What it means

1. transitiveTo meet (someone) or find (something), especially unexpectedly.

   It fits Ioues ſonne / VVraſtle vvith Lyons, and to tugge vvith Beares, / Grapple vvith Dragons, and incounter VVhales.

   1613, Thomas Heywood, The Silver Age, […], London: […] Nicholas Okes, and are to be sold by Beniamin Lightfoote […], →OCLC, Act III, signature G, recto

   2 more examples

   H' incounters Talgol, routs the Bear, / And takes the Fidler Prisoner; / Conveys him to enchanted Castle, / There shuts him fast in wooden Bastile.

   1662 (indicated as 1663), [Samuel Butler], “[The First Part of Hudibras]. Canto II.”, in Hudibras. The First and Second Parts. […], London: […] John Martyn and Henry Herringman, […], published 1678, →OCLC; republished in A[lfred] R[ayney] Waller, editor, Hudibras: Written in the Time of the Late Wars, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: University Press, 1905, →OCLC, page 28

   It ran derailed for about 500 yards before encountering a set of points, which caused it to veer into the path of an Immingham-Ferrybridge coal train, powered by Freightliner 66521 (one of a class of locomotive well-known for being well-built enough to destroy anything that got in its way).

   2021 February 24, Greg Morse, “Great Heck: a tragic chain of events”, in RAIL, number 925, page 39

   Synonyms: cross paths

2. transitiveTo confront (someone or something) face to face.
3. intransitiverareTo meet one another.

   […] yet when the brother and the sister had encountered, according to the set appointment, none of these impassionedments had been repeated.

   1852, Herman Melville, Pierre; or The Ambiguities

In a sentence

It fits Ioues ſonne / VVraſtle vvith Lyons, and to tugge vvith Beares, / Grapple vvith Dragons, and incounter VVhales.

1613, Thomas Heywood, The Silver Age, […], London: […] Nicholas Okes, and are to be sold by Beniamin Lightfoote […], →OCLC, Act III, signature G, recto

Where it comes from

1. Latinin“in”
2. Late Latinincontrā“in front of”
3. Old Frenchencontrer“to confront”
4. Anglo-Normanencountrer
5. Middle Englishencountren
6. Englishencounter

From Middle English encountren, from Anglo-Norman encountrer, Old French encontrer (“to confront”), from encontre (“against, counter to”), from Late Latin incontrā (“in front of”) itself from Latin in (“in”) + contrā (“against”).