Entryism

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A political tactic by which an organisation or state encourages its members or agents to infiltrate another organisation in an attempt to gain recruits or to encourage an unelectable candidate. uncountable

    "Conservative MPs are warning of a risk of entryism in the party as the pro-Brexit group Leave.EU encourages its supporters to become members in order to back Boris Johnson or Jacob Rees-Mogg in a future leadership contest."

Example

More examples

"Conservative MPs are warning of a risk of entryism in the party as the pro-Brexit group Leave.EU encourages its supporters to become members in order to back Boris Johnson or Jacob Rees-Mogg in a future leadership contest."

Etymology

Previously spelt entrism, borrowed from French entrisme but reconstructed as entry + -ism.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.