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intrusive

UK/ɪnˈtɹuːsɪv/US/ɪnˈtɹuːsɪv/
adjectiveB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,958 of 15,258leans written

Intrusive means pushing in where you are not welcome. Intrusive questions, intrusive surveillance, an intrusive noise.

It is the standard word in privacy law and in press regulation, and what counts as intrusive turns on whether there was a reasonable expectation of privacy. In surgery, less intrusive means the same as less invasive and is the goal.

Definitions of intrusive

  1. 1adjectiveintrusivePushing in where you are not welcome.B2+

    “I found her questions about my salary and my marriage rather intrusive.”

intrusive is a quality.

Where it comes from

A back-formation from intrusion, from Latin intrudere, to thrust in.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *trewd-

  2. English, today

    intrusive

a back-formation from intrusion, ive.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

intrusive in the wild

  • Due to its variant nature, the term gabbro may be applied loosely to a wide range of intrusive rocks, many of which are merely "gabbroic".

    Gabbro

  • Both concepts apply to a situation where an intrusive language establishes itself in the territory of another, typically as the result of migration.

    Stratum (linguistics)

  • In contrast, a dike is a discordant intrusive sheet, which does cut across older rocks.

    Sill (geology)

  • An intrusive suite is a group of igneous intrusions related in time and space.

    Intrusive suite

  • All rocks in an intrusive suite result from the same magma-producing event.

    Intrusive suite

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

  • intrusive thought