Intrusive
adj, noun ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 An igneous rock that is forced, while molten, into cracks or between other layers of rock
- 1 Tending to intrude; doing that which is not welcome; interrupting or disturbing; entering without permission or welcome.
"Did it ever cross your mind that he might find all those questions you ask intrusive?"
- 2 Of rocks: forced, while in a plastic or molten state, into the cavities or between the cracks or layers of other rocks.
- 3 epenthetic
- 4 Designating a type of collection in which each item keeps track of what collection it is in, rather than the more conventional approach of a collection keeping track of what items it contains. An intrusive collection does not "own" its contents and a single item can be part of multiple intrusive collections.
"an intrusive linked list"
- 1 tending to intrude (especially upon privacy) wordnet
- 2 thrusting inward wordnet
- 3 of rock material; forced while molten into cracks between layers of other rock wordnet
Example
More examples"In the name of the Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva, Claudio Soarez Rocha expressed admiration for the continuing effort which Esperanto-speaking people throughout the world are always making, for the greater spread of Esperanto. He wrote, amongst other things,"We know that in the history of mankind, there have been languages that have become intrusive as a result of political power, such as Latin, or to a certain extent French and lately, English. We very much wish, in fact, that one day Esperanto could be accepted by the majority of the nations, as a language adopted to facilitate communication without linguistic privileges.""
Etymology
Back-formation from intrusion, + -ive.
Related phrases
More for "intrusive"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.