Definition of "encroachment"

At the same time, the encroachment of vegetation proceeds apace, and broom and brambles have already made portions of the line impassable, even on foot.

1949 November and December, “Notes and News: Festiniog and Welsh Highland Railways”, in Railway Magazine, page 408

The Legislative department derives a superiority in our Governments from other circumstances. Its constitutional powers being at once more extensive, and less susceptible of precise limits, it can, with the greater facility, mask, under complicated and indirect measures, the encroachments which it makes on the coördinate departments.

1788, Publius [pseudonym; James Madison], “Number XXXXVII”, in The Federalist: A Collection of Essays, Written in Favour of the New Constitution, […] , volume II, New York, N.Y.: […] J. and A. M‘Lean, […]

Ah! my brother, we do well to watch our birthright jealously; the least invasion on the meanest peasant, the slightest encroachment of the powerful, are not matters to be neglected—such are the first steps of tyranny.

1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter V, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume I, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), pages 53–54