Word of the Day Archive
Wednesday July 12, 2000
obtrude \uhb-TROOD; ob-\ , transitive verb:
1. To thrust out; to push out.
2. To force or impose (one's self, remarks, opinions, etc.) on others with undue insistence or without solicitation.
intransitive verb:
1. To thrust upon a group or upon attention; to intrude.
Moreover, crime is something which the citizen is happy to forget when it does not obtrude itself into public consciousness.
-- "Voting On Crime", Irish Times, May 30, 1997
For the next few months, Polidori continued to obtrude himself on Byron's attention in every possible way -- popping into every conversation, sulking when he was ignored, challenging Percy Bysshe Shelley to a duel, attacking an apothecary and getting arrested "accidentally" banging his employer on the knee with an oar and saying he wasn't sorry -- until finally Byron dismissed him.
-- Angeline Goreau, "Physician, Behave Thyself", New York Times, September 3, 1989
He was, in his relationships with his few close friends, a considerate, delightful, sensitive, helpful, unpretentious person who did not obtrude his social and political views, nor make agreeing with them a condition of steadfast friendship.
-- Alden Whitman, "Daring Lindbergh Attained the Unattainable With Historic Flight Across Atlantic", New York Times, August 27, 1974
And, as is common in books sewn together from previously published essays, certain redundancies obtrude.
-- Maxine Kumin, "First, Perfect Fear; Then, Universal Love", New York Times, October 17, 1993
Obtrude is from Latin obtrudere, "to thrust upon, to force," from ob, "in front of, before" + trudere, "to push, to thrust."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for obtrude
