obtrude

present singular third person obtrudes · participle present obtruding · participle past obtruded · past obtruded

1. transitiveTo proffer (something) by force; to impose (something) on someone or into some area.First known use 16th c.

   By which we may see, that they who are not called to Counsell, can have no good Counsell in such cases to obtrude.

   1651, Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

   2 more examples

   It was unusual with Margaret to obtrude her own subject of conversation on others; but, in this case, she was so anxious to prevent Mr. Thornton from feeling annoyance at the words he had accidentally overheard, that it was not until she had done speaking that she coloured all over with consciousness […]

   1855, Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

   The prospect of people writing PhD theses that obtrude hard facts into the question of whether it's a) grim or b) nice up north is naturally worrying to all those of us who like to shout about those matters in the saloon bars of England.

   2007 July 16, Andrew Martin, The Guardian

2. intransitiveTo become apparent in an unwelcome way, to be forcibly imposed; to jut in, to intrude (on or into).First known use 16th c.

   In such a very chronological book, though, small anachronisms do obtrude.

   2010 August 7, Colin Greenland, The Guardian

   4 more examples

   How you can bear such recollections, is astonishing to me!—They will sometimes obtrude—but how you can court them!

   1815, Jane Austen, Emma, volume III, chapter 18

   Sometimes I dreamed strangely of disturbed earth, and of hair, still golden and living, obtruded through the coffin-chinks.

   1853, Charlotte Brontë, Villette

   Occasionally the thought obtruded itself that possibly at some later day Tarzan would regret his magnanimity, and claim his rights.

   1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 99

   It was not only the police but the palace which obtruded on a home secretary's life.

   1991, Roy Jenkins, A Life at the Centre

3. reflexiveTo impose (oneself) on others; to cut in.First known use 17th c.

   As 1968 began to ebb into 1969, however, and as “anticlimax” began to become a real word in my lexicon, another term began to obtrude itself.

   2010, Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22, Atlantic, published 2011, page 121

   2 more examples

   She obtruded herself upon the Queen; she protested her party views; she asked for petty favours, and attributed the refusals to the influence of Abigail.

   1934, Winston Churchill, Marlborough: His Life and Times, volume II

   This scarcity of knowledge also obtruded itself in 1998, when three scientists in Wales published a report called "What Sort of Men Take Garlic Preparations?"

   2004 January 13, Marc Abrahams, The Guardian