Intrusion

How to spell intrusion

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce intrusion

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does intrusion mean?

1. nounThe act of entering or forcing oneself into a place, situation, or matter where one is not welcome.

Intrusion in a sentence

• The late-night phone call felt like an unwelcome intrusion on her evening.

• The company apologised for the intrusion into customer records after the security breach.

Where does intrusion come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb intrudere, meaning 'to thrust in' or 'to push oneself in', built from the prefix in- ('into') and trudere ('to thrust, shove or push'). The past participle stem intrus- gave the late Latin noun intrusio, describing the act of forcing one's way in. English took it through Old French and Medieval Latin in the 1400s, originally with a legal sense of unlawfully entering land or seizing a position one had no right to. The same trudere root still pushes its way into relatives like 'protrude', 'obtrude' and 'abstruse'. The spelling trap is the central -trus-, which sounds like a soft 'z' but is written with an s, and the ending is -sion rather than -tion because the stem already ends in s.

How the word is built

• in- (into)
• trus (from Latin trudere: to thrust, push)
• -ion (noun of action)