Other forms: encountered, encounters, encountering
To encounter is to meet somebody or run into a problem unexpectedly. Encounter difficulties, encountered a bear, first encountered in 1963.
It is more formal than meet and implies that the meeting was not arranged. In technical and academic writing it is the standard verb for coming across a problem: we encountered an error. As a noun, an encounter is the meeting itself: a chance encounter, a brief encounter, a close encounter. Note encounter group, a form of group therapy, and that encounter can carry a hint of confrontation.
1verbencounterTo meet somebody or something unexpectedly.
“On our walk, we encountered a group of deer in the forest.”
synonyms: come across, run into
2noununexpectedAn unexpected meeting.
“It was a chance encounter that changed both their careers.”
encounter is an unexpected meeting.
Also accepted in games: come across
Old French encontrer comes from Latin in contra, meaning against or in front of. An encounter was originally a meeting face to face in hostility, and the modern neutral sense has only partly softened it.
Latin
incontrā — in front of
Old French
encontrer — to confront
Anglo-Norman
encountrer
Middle English
encountren
English, today
encounter
Built from
From Middle English encountren, from Anglo-Norman encountrer, Old French encontrer (“to confront”), from encontre (“against, counter to”), from Latin incontrā (“in front of”) itself from Latin in (“in”) + contrā (“against”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Sharper Verbs