Invasion

How to spell invasion

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce invasion

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does invasion mean?

1. nounAn act of entering a territory by armed force in order to occupy or attack it.
2. nounAn unwelcome intrusion into someone's private life, space, or rights.

Invasion in a sentence

• The museum exhibit documents the naval invasion of the coast.

• She felt the constant photography was an invasion of her privacy.

• Historians still debate the strategy behind the invasion of the northern provinces.

• Reading another employee's emails is a serious invasion of personal boundaries.

Where does invasion come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin invasio, a noun built on the verb invadere, which literally meant 'to go into' or 'to enter forcibly', formed from in- ('into, upon') and vadere ('to go, to walk'). The same vadere root quietly survives in everyday English words such as 'evade' (to go out of, escape) and 'pervade' (to go through). English took the word in during the late 1400s by way of Old French invasion, and from the start it carried the hostile sense of armed forces crossing a border. Over time it broadened to cover any unwelcome intrusion, as in an invasion of privacy or an invasion of insects. The spelling trap is the ending: the soft 'zh' sound is written -sion rather than -tion, a clue that points back to the vas part of the Latin root.

How the word is built

• in- (into, upon)
• vad/vas (from Latin vadere: to go)
• -sion (noun-forming suffix)