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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Irruption

Irruption \Ir*rup"tion\, n. [L. irruptio: cf. F. irruption. See Irrupted.]

  1. A bursting in; a sudden, violent rushing into a place; as, irruptions of the sea.

    Lest evil tidings, with too rude irruption Hitting thy aged ear, should pierce too deep.
    --Milton.

  2. A sudden and violent inroad, or entrance of invaders; as, the irruptions of the Goths into Italy.
    --Addison.

    Syn: Invasion; incursion; inroad. See Invasion.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
irruption

1570s, from Middle French irruption or directly from Latin irruptionem (nominative irruptio) "a breaking in, bursting in, invasion," noun of action from past participle stem of irrumpere, from assimilated form of in- "into, in, on, upon" (see in- (2)) + rumpere (see rupture (n.)). Frequently confused with eruption.

Wiktionary
irruption

n. 1 The action of irrupt or breaking into; a violent entry or invasion; an inbreaking; an intrusion. 2 An abrupt increase of numbers of a particular animal.

WordNet
irruption
  1. n. a sudden violent entrance; a bursting in; "the recent irruption of bad manners"

  2. a sudden sharp increase in the relative numbers of a population

  3. a sudden violent spontaneous occurrence (usually of some undesirable condition); "the outbreak of hostilities" [syn: outbreak, eruption]

Usage examples of "irruption".

She remembered his irruption into Bohemia, in the year one thousand seven hundred and forty-four, at a time when she thought that country, and all her other dominions, secure from his invasion by the treaty of Breslau, which she had in no particular contravened.

Yet, far from waiting for the result of these remonstrances, he made a sudden irruption into Lusatia, took possession of Gorlitz, and obliged prince Charles of Lorraine to retire before him into Bohemia.

In such a mood I was loitering about the old gray cloisters of Westminster Abbey, enjoying that luxury of wandering thought which one is apt to dignify with the name of reflection, when suddenly an irruption of madcap boys from Westminster school, playing at football, broke in upon the monastic stillness of the place, making the vaulted passages and mouldering tombs echo with their merriment.

Doubtless they chose farming because that life is private and secluded from irruptions of undesirable strangers-- like the pilot-house hermitage.

If I have not lost my mind I have accurately conveyed those two Vesuvian irruptions of philosophy.

For a council was called to settle what was best and most expedient to be done, in order to repel such frequent and fatal irruptions and plunderings of the above-named nations.

The superconscious is reduced to the subconscious, the transpersonal is collapsed to the prepersonal, the emergence of the higher is reinterpreted as an irruption from the lower.

Their vexatious inroads were changed into formidable irruptions, and, after a long vicissitude of mutual calamities, many tribes of the victorious invaders established themselves in the provinces of the Roman Empire.

The door leading into the sitting room was ajar, and they could hear Heriot and his friends making merry irruption into the place.

He had turned his back on Washington, and nothing, not even formidable irruptions like that of Pleasanton, could make him change his plan.

What the Selenites made of this amazing, and to my mind undignified irruption from another planet, I have no means of guessing.

I was even accustomed to make an irruption into some houses, where I was well entertained, and after learning the kernels and very last sieveful of news—what had subsided, the prospects of war and peace, and whether the world was likely to hold together much longer—I was let out through the rear avenues, and so escaped to the woods again.

I only affirm that the northern regions were not, when their irruptions subdued the Romans, overpeopled with regard to their real extent of territory, and power of fertility.