intrusion

Noun

intrusion (countable and uncountable, plural intrusions)

1. The forcible inclusion or entry of an external group or individual; the act of intruding.
   • She viewed sales calls as an unwelcome intrusion.
   • Sudden anger rose in him. “What I’m looking for,” he barked, “is to be left in peace.” His voice trembled with a rage far bigger than her intrusion merited, the rage which shocked him whenever it coursed through his nervous system, like a flood.2001, Salman Rushdie, Fury: A Novel, London: Jonathan Cape, →ISBN, page 5
   1. A penetration by hackers, a computer virus, etc.
      • The intrusion of the virus rendered our other security efforts useless.
   2. The insertion of a phoneme into the pronunciation of a word despite its absence from the spelling. (e.g. intrusive r)
      • A current challenge in recent work on Spanish sound structure is to understand the conditions that determine vowel intrusion and the consequences vowel intrusion may have on Spanish phonology.2009, Benjamin Schmeiser, edited by Marine Vigário, Sónia Frota, and M. João Freitas, Phonetics and Phonology: Interactions and Interrelations, →ISBN, page 181
2. (uncountable) A feeling of being intruded upon; the state or condition of being intruded.
   • I watched and felt intrusion upon the reigning terror of them2021, Debbie Armstrong, Mental Exodus: Journey Between the Lines
3. Magma forced into other rock formations; the rock formed when such magma solidifies.
4. A structure that lies within a historic district but is nonhistoric and irrelevant to the district.
   • This setting is slightly altered by modern intrusion.1969, The National Register of Historic Places, 1969, Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, page 275
   • Although there are modern intrusions (a road and communications facilities on the summit), the mountain is important to the Kumeyaay community's belief system.1997, Donna J. Seifert; Barbara J. Little; Beth L. Savage; John H., Jr. Sprinkle, “Defining boundaries for National Register properties”, in National Register Bulletin, Washington, D.C.: National...
5. An involuntarily arising idea or memory that is nuisant and falsifies an accurate impression of the world.
   • In general, intrusion errors tend to occur with greater frequency in individuals whose cognitive capacity is diminished relative to that of young adults. Poor readers, older participants, and neuropsychological patients exhibit more intrusion errors than controls.2011, Karl Haberlandt, “Intrusion Errors”, in Jeffrey S. Kreutzer, John DeLuca, Bruce Caplan, editor, Encyclopedia of Clinical Neuropsychology, →DOI, pages 1353–1354
   • To our knowledge, there have been no longitudinal studies that have examined the association between semantic intrusion errors and the longitudinal progression of PreMCI to a formal diagnosis of MCI or, conversely, a return to a cognitively normal state over time. Further, the association between...2021 June 23, Elizabeth A Crocco, Rosie E Curiel, Marcela Kitaigorodsky, Gabriella A Grau, Jessica M Garcia, Ranjan Duara, Warren Barker, Cesar L Chirinos, Rosemarie Rodriguez b, David A Loewenstein...
6. (collective, rare) A swarm or nest of cockroaches, infesting a structure.
   • When I turned on the light, scattered mats of cockroach intrusions scurried into the walls.
   • The sight of an intrusion had me running for an exterminator.