INTRUSIVE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does intrusive mean? 

• INTRUSIVE (adjective)
  The adjective INTRUSIVE has 3 senses:

1. tending to intrude (especially upon privacy)

2. of rock material; forced while molten into cracks between layers of other rock

3. thrusting inward

  Familiarity information: INTRUSIVE used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• INTRUSIVE (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Tending to intrude (especially upon privacy)

Context example:

she felt her presence there was intrusive

Similar:

encroaching; invasive; trespassing (gradually intrusive without right or permission)

busy; busybodied; interfering; meddlesome; meddling; officious (intrusive in a meddling or offensive manner)

Attribute:

intrusiveness; meddlesomeness; officiousness (aggressiveness as evidenced by intruding; by advancing yourself or your ideas without invitation)

Antonym:

unintrusive (not interfering or meddling)

Derivation:

intrude (thrust oneself in as if by force)

intrude (enter uninvited)

intrusiveness (aggressiveness as evidenced by intruding; by advancing yourself or your ideas without invitation)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Of rock material; forced while molten into cracks between layers of other rock

Similar:

irruptive; plutonic (of igneous rock that has solidified beneath the earth's surface; granite or diorite or gabbro)

Domain category:

geology (a science that deals with the history of the earth as recorded in rocks)

Antonym:

extrusive (of rock material; forced out while molten through cracks in the earth's surface)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Thrusting inward

Context example:

an intrusive arm of the sea

Similar:

intruding (projecting inward)

Also:

concave (curving inward)

Antonym:

protrusive (thrusting outward)

 Context examples 

We can't be happy together for five minutes in the evening, but some intrusive female knocks at the door, and says, “Oh, if you please, Miss Dora, would you step upstairs!”

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

OCD is characterised by unwanted intrusive thoughts and repetitive rituals and causes pronounced impairment in everyday life.

(Deep brain stimulation may significantly improve OCD symptoms, University of Cambridge)

I glared at the intrusive vicar with no very friendly eyes; but Holmes took his pipe from his lips and sat up in his chair like an old hound who hears the view-halloa.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Only the other day, as I was seated in Watier’s, my box of prime macouba open upon the table beside me, an Irish bishop thrust in his intrusive fingers.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

An anxiety disorder in which a person has intrusive ideas, thoughts, or images that occur repeatedly, and in which he or she feels driven to perform certain behaviors over and over again.

(Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, NCI Dictionary)

The unfortunate delay can be apportioned between a blundering pilot and an intrusive sandbank.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Also called intrusive thought.

(Interfering thought, NCI Dictionary)

Well, matters went from bad to worse with us, and this animal Hudson became more and more intrusive, until at last, on making some insolent reply to my father in my presence one day, I took him by the shoulders and turned him out of the room.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

You will kindly show the envelope of this letter to my man, Austin, when you call, as he has to take every precaution to shield me from the intrusive rascals who call themselves 'journalists.'

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)