incur

/ɪnˈkʌr/

/ɪnˈkʌ/

Other forms: incurred; incurring; incurs

To incur is to get or receive — and usually it's something you brought upon yourself. If you don't pay your credit card bills on time, you'll likely incur lots of fees and some serious debt.

Generally, when you incur something, that something is undesirable. You can incur penalties, expenses, a parking ticket, or a friend’s wrath, for example. But it's pretty unlikely that you'd incur free tickets to the World Series. Frederick Douglass once famously said, “I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence."

Definitions of incur

1. verb

   make oneself subject to; bring upon oneself; become liable to
   “People who smoke incur a great danger to their health”

   types:

   run

   be affected by; be subjected to

   type of:

   subject

   cause to experience or suffer or make liable or vulnerable to
2. verb

   receive a specified treatment (abstract)
   synonyms: find, get, obtain, receive

   acquire, get

   come into the possession of something concrete or abstract

   types:

   take

   ascertain or determine by measuring, computing or take a reading from a dial

   type of:

   change

   undergo a change; become different in essence; losing one's or its original nature