Interloper
//ˌɪntəˈləʊ̯pə// noun
noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 One who interferes, intrudes or gets involved where not welcome, particularly a self-interested intruder.
"They disliked the interloper, and forced him to leave."
- 2 someone who intrudes on the privacy or property of another without permission wordnet
- 3 An unlicensed or illegitimate trader. obsolete
Example
More examples"They disliked the interloper, and forced him to leave."
Etymology
From inter- + loper (“runner, rover”), as in landloper (“vagrant”) (from lope (“to leap, to jump”) (originally dialectal)). Originally spelt enterloper and used in specific sense, “unauthorized trader trespassing on privileges of chartered companies”, later general sense of “self-interested intruder” from 1630s.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.