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Irruption

noun
1.
A sudden violent entrance; a bursting in.
2.
A sudden sharp increase in the relative numbers of a population.
3.
A sudden violent spontaneous occurrence (usually of some undesirable condition).  Synonyms: eruption, outbreak.






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"Irruption" Quotes from Famous Books



... attention? What kind of notions it was that had settled in their minds under such ministration, would be, so to speak, brought out, it would be made apparent what they were or were not taught, when so strong and general a sensation was produced by the irruption among them of the two reformers just named, proclaiming, as they both did, (notwithstanding very considerable differences of secondary order,) the principles which had been authoritatively declared to be of the essence of Christianity, in that model of doctrine ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... The irruption of any human being into a small and, for any reason, closely welded together set of people produces much the same effect as does the addition of a new product to a chemical mixture. And the arrival of the English lawyer affected not only Nancy herself but, in varying ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... reduced to extremity by an irruption of some northern hordes in B.C. 660, and had nearly disappeared from among the states of Kau. Under the marquis Wei, known in history as duke Wan, its fortunes revived, and he became a sort of second founder of ...
— The Shih King • James Legge

... the Donati and Cerchi was fostered by the irruption of a family from Pistoia, who had separated into two distinct branches—the Bianchi and the Neri (the Whites and the Blacks)—and drawn their swords upon each other. The Cerchi chose to believe that the Bianchi ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead

... finding that the people adhered to the convention, and that his harangues against James and popery made no impression on them, he returned to New York. The next spring he appeared again before the fort; and, being favoured by an irruption of the Indians, obtained possession of it. The principal members of the convention absconded, upon which their effects were seized and confiscated. This harsh measure produced resentments which were transmitted ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall

... from Granada, on an eminence commanding an extensive view of the Vega, stood the strong Moorish castle of Roma. Hither the neighboring peasantry drove their flocks and herds and hurried with their most precious effects on the irruption of a Christian force, and any foraging or skirmishing party from Granada, on being intercepted in their return, threw themselves into Roma, manned its embattled towers, and set the enemy at defiance. The garrison were accustomed to have parties of Moors clattering up to their gates so ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... blessed with abundance, peopled the lovely valley. It might have been almost an Eden, but for the wickedness of fallen man. This powerful tribe the Cenis, was at war with another tribe, called the Cannohantimos. Frequently the valley would be swept by an irruption of fierce warriors, with gleaming tomahawks and poisoned arrows and demoniac yells. Conflagration, blood, and shrieks of misery ensued. The valley, which God had made so beautiful for his children, those children had converted ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott

... the globe by an excess of its radiation above the quantity of heat received from the sun. The final cooling of its solid crust, down to the mean temperature at which we now find it, might, as is obvious, have been effected by a great irruption of waters, like that of which we have distinct evidence in the diluvial deposits, and the animal remains upon its surface. From that time, a state of equilibrium in the action of solar and terrestrial radiation having been attained, while the mean temperature ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... taken on an autumn look. I am told that this is due to a local irruption of caterpillars, and not to the waning of the summer, but it has a suspicious air. Probably the caterpillars knew. It seems strange now to reflect that there was a time when I liked caterpillars; when I chased them up suburban streets, ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne

... began slowly to turn over the leaves of his Lexicon, in order to prepare his lesson. He had not been long thus employed, when he was interrupted by the irruption of the greatest dunce in the school, introduced to the reader in the former chapter as Churchill, alias Oars, a youth of fifteen, who had constant recourse to Louis for information. He now laid his dog's-eared Eutropius before Louis, and opened his business with ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May

... that had dwindled to a mere vaporing of dull speakers and now and then a brief quarrel over a point of order; but there was an unusually large attendance of journalists in the reporters' waiting-room, chatting, smoking, and keeping on the 'qui vive' for the general irruption of the Congressional volcano that must come when the time was ripe for it. Senator Dilworthy and Philip were in the Diplomatic Gallery; Washington sat in the public gallery, and Col. Sellers was, not far away. The Colonel had been flying about the corridors ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... a very perfect conjunction with the other two superior planets; just in the day when Mars has joined Jupiter, and just in the region where this conjunction has taken place. Therefore the apparition of this star is not like a secret hostile irruption, as was that one of 1572, but the spectacle of a public triumph, or the entry of a mighty potentate; when the couriers ride in some time before to prepare his lodgings, and the crowd of young urchins begin to think the time over long to wait, then roll in, one after another, ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant

... hoped more from the beginning of this speech than the conclusion quite bore out, but it was delightful to hear her talking something more than society nothings to him. However, that was ended for the present by the sudden irruption of the spoony young man into the conversation; he had come out very shattered from a desperate intellectual conflict with the young lady from Girton, to whom he had ventured on a remark which, as he made it, had seemed to him likely ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey

... unbolted the yard door, but ignored their presence. Then they saw her return and slowly mount the outer stair-ladder, which went up to the top floor. Two minutes afterwards they were startled by the irruption of the work-girls. As for the work-girls, they gave quite loud, startled squeals, suddenly seeing the two men on their right hand, in the obscure morning. And they lingered on the stair-way to gaze in rapt curiosity, poking ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... persistently obtrudes itself, and one quickly falls into a condition of readiness to believe the most incredible of the countless weird stories that sailors love to relate to each other, especially when this condition of credulity is helped, as it sometimes is, by the sudden irruption of some strange, unaccountable sound, or succession of sounds, upon the peaceful quietude and serenity of the night. These sounds are occasionally of the weirdest and most hair-raising quality; and while the startled ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood

... apprehensions of the public. A bombshell filled with dynamite had been thrown into a cafe, and various votaries of the comparatively innocuous petit verre had been wounded (I am not sure whether any one had been killed) by the irruption. Of course there had been arrests and incarcerations, and the Intransigeant and the Rappel were filled with the echoes of the explosion. The tone of these organs is rarely edifying, and it had never been less so than on this occasion. I wondered as I looked through them ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... is a great Number of disciplin'd and arm'd Militia, ready in Case of any sudden Irruption of Indians or Insurrection of Negroes, from whom they are under but small ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones

... they were to deport themselves, when they should assume the concealed arms—and—for I will do the Duke no wrong—I understood their orders were precise, not only to spare the person of the King, but also those of the courtiers, and to protect all who might be in the presence against an irruption of the fanatics. In other respects, they had charge to disarm the Gentlemen-pensioners in the guard-room, and, in fine, to obtain the ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... mean time, the inhabitants of the country into which these two vast hordes of ferocious, though restrained and organized combatants, had made such a sudden irruption, were flying as fast as they could from the awful scene which they expected was to ensue. They carried from their villages and cabins what little property could be saved, and took the women and children away to retreats and fastnesses, wherever they imagined they could ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... generated by woman's irruption into a new domain of activity produced among laboring men a feeling of blind discontent and concern. Like all men in apprehension, they drew together for mutual protection, they knew not clearly against what. They formed "labor unions," and believed ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce

... to the domain of Adherbal. He was himself bold and warlike, while the other, at whose destruction he aimed, was quiet, unfit for arms, of a mild temper, a fit subject for injustice, and a prey to fear rather than an object of it. Jugurtha, accordingly, with a powerful force, made a sudden irruption into his dominions, took several prisoners, with cattle and other booty, set fire to the buildings, and made hostile demonstrations against several places with his cavalry. He then retreated, with all his followers, ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust

... of the staid English household was disturbed by the irruption of the two West Indians, for the returning mail steamer carried a message to Mr. ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers

... "Great prose, of equal elevation, commands our respect more than great verse," says he, "since it implies a more permanent and level height, a life more pervaded with the grandeur of the thought. The poet often only makes an irruption, like the Parthian, and is off again, shooting while he retreats; but the prose writer has conquered like a Roman and settled colonies." We may ask ourselves, almost with dismay, whether such works exist at all but in the imagination of the student. For the bulk of the best of books is apt ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... last irruption into the Pyrenees, Sir Thomas Graham had made an unsuccessful attempt to carry St. Sebastian by storm, and having, ever since, been prosecuting the siege with unremitting vigour, the works were now reduced to such a state as to justify a second attempt, and our division sent forth their three hundred ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid

... out of the window, staring vainly into blackness between the parted curtains. As she turned back, passing the writing-table, she noticed that Cicely's irruption had made her forget to post her letters—an unusual oversight. A glance at the clock told her that she was not too late for the mail—reminding her, at the same time, that it was scarcely three hours since Bessy had ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... crumb; the streets were pervaded by a greasy, tallowy odor, as after the passage of the great migratory bands of olden times. The buildings in the Rue Maqua, protected by a friendly influence, escaped the devastating irruption, and were only called on to give shelter to a few of the leaders, ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... glance upon the condition of the Roman Empire at the moment when the barbarians invaded it to attempt establishment; after that we shall investigate the long struggles which ensued between them and Rome, from their irruption into the West and South of Europe, down to the foundation of the principal modern monarchies. This foundation will thus become for us a resting-point, from whence we shall depart again to follow the course of the history of Europe, which ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... defence of their country, yet the approbation and smiles of the females gave such a zest to the act, and stamped such a sanction upon the whole undertaking, that one and all burned with the most lively enthusiasm to become willing agents to stem the threatened irruption of the invader, and to repel his aggressions even at the risk of their life's dearest blood. With the exception of two individuals, who had taken some pique, every man in the parish capable of bearing arms enrolled himself ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt

... honoured by the experiment. Priests and women were not covered by the code; matter of omission, rather than of importance. The wanderer had taken his seat by the little pond in the garden. Here to all appearance he remained in a meditation which was roughly interrupted by the irruption of the lord of the mansion into a room close by. Jubei kicked the sho[u]ji out of the frames, and strode to the edge of the verandah. His hair was in wild disorder. He wore armour on his shoulders, and was stark naked below the waist. Face twitching and eyes flashing he hailed ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... Manoa I refrain, too suddenly To utter what will come at last too soon; Lest evil tidings with too rude irruption Hitting thy aged ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... the lake now appeared an enormous mass of smoking rocks, as if an upheaving of the soil had formed immense shoals. Imagine the waters of the lake aroused by a hurricane, then suddenly solidified by an intense frost, and some conception may be formed of the aspect of the lake three hours after the irruption of this irresistible torrent ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)

... the same immorality in University life. Melanchthon's prophecy had proved too true: "We have seen already how religion has been put in peril by the irruption of barbarism, and I am very much afraid that this will happen again." At a Disputation in the University of Wittenberg, the Chancellor addressed a disputant with such epithets as "Hear, thou hog! thou hound! thou fool! or whatever thou art, thou stolid ass!" Another ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... of that amid which man plays his part. In such sermons as those on the "Intermediate State," the "Invisible World," the "Greatness and Littleness of Human Life," the "Individuality of the Soul," the "Mysteriousness of our Present Being," we may see exemplified the enormous irruption into the world of modern thought of the unknown and the unknowable, as much as in the writers who, with far different objects, set against it the clearness and certainty of what we do know. But, beyond all, the sermons appealed to men to go back into their own thoughts and ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church

... from Longman a copy of "Roderick," with the author's compliments, for which I much thank you. I don't know where I shall put all the noble presents I have lately received in that way; the "Excursion," Wordsworth's two last vols., and now "Roderick," have come pouring in upon me like some irruption from Helicon. The story of the brave Maccabee was already, you may be sure, familiar to me in all its parts. I have, since the receipt of your present, read it quite through again, and with no diminished pleasure. I don't know ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... facing them, the Germans charged forward over the practically unresisting enemy in their immediate front, and, penetrating through the gap thus created, pressed on silently and swiftly to the south and west. By their sudden irruption they were able to overrun and surprise a large proportion of the French troops billeted behind the front line in this area and to bring some of the French guns as well as our own under a hot rifle fire at ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... the shape of three huge, long-legged, unwashed, odoriferous Texan soldiers, and we passed a wretched night in consequence. The Texans are certainly not prone to take offence where they see none is intended; for when this irruption took place, I couldn't help remarking to the Judge with regard to the most obnoxious man who was occupying the centre seat to our mutual discomfort,—"I say, Judge, this gentleman has got the longest legs I ever saw." "Has he?" replied the Judge; "and he has got the d——dest, ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle

... There was the sudden irruption of a laughing, curious crowd into the bar-room, led by Yuba Bill, the driver. Then the crowd parted, and out of their midst stepped two children, a boy and a girl, the oldest apparently of not more ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... pretty and homely, they were all in their best dresses, and no doubt stared at Mrs. Newcome, so obstinately plain in her attire. When we came upstairs from dinner, we found her seated entirely by herself, tapping her fan at the fireplace. Timid groups of persons were round about, waiting for the irruption of the gentlemen, until the pleasure should begin. Mr. Newcome, who came upstairs yawning, was heard to say to his wife, "Oh, dam, let's cut!" And they went downstairs, and waited until their carriage had arrived, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... suddenly called away, and the inhabitants were menaced by a force of 3,000 Frenchmen, who demanded admission. This was refused them; and happily, the return of the allied forces in a few days, saved Geneva from the melancholy effects which must have ensued from the irruption of the French, who were greatly exasperated that the city did not at first oppose the entrance of the Allies. The ramparts form the principal promenade of the Genevese; and from some of them (particularly from ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard

... romantic union between her and "a certain young gentleman," as they archly called the Duke. His continued indifference to her they took almost as an affront to themselves. Where in all England was a prettier, sweeter girl than their Katie? The sudden irruption of Zuleika into Oxford was especially grievous to them because they could no longer hope against hope that Katie would be led by the Duke to the altar, and thence into the highest social circles, and live happily ever after. Luckily it ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... near the Danube; and incited the Illyrians, by the means of Genthius their king, to join with him in the war. It was also reported, that the barbarians, allured by promise of rewards, were to make an irruption into Italy, through the lower Gaul by the shore of the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... proves more than theory in any case, has there been any irruption of colored people northward because of the abolishment of slavery in this ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... place at the table as clerk of the court. An attempt had been made by old Christy to keep out the gipsy gang, but in vain; and they, with the village worthies, and the household, half filled the hall. The old housekeeper and the butler were in a panic at this dangerous irruption. They hurried away all the valuable things and portable articles that were at hand, and even kept a dragon watch on the gipsies, lest they should carry off the house clock ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving

... was recalled by the army of Ferdinand, which once more poured down into the Vega, completely devastated its harvests, and then swept back to consummate the conquests of the revolted towns. To this irruption succeeded an interval of peace—the calm before the storm. From every part of Spain, the most chivalric and resolute of the Moors, taking advantage of the pause in the contest, flocked to Granada; and that city became the focus of all that paganism in Europe ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book IV. • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... have married and perpetuated their name. It is almost a necessity that it should be so, for otherwise many princes and barons would object to their sons entering the Order. Its object is to keep back the irruption of the Moslems, and when men have done their share of hard work no regret need be felt if they desire to leave the Order. Our founder had no thought of covering Europe with monasteries, and beyond the fact that it is necessary there should be men to administer our manors ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty

... the Western world woman occupied a prominent place. Priestess or prophetess, she stood in all ministerial offices on an equality with man. It was only the irruption of religions from the East, the faiths of Isis or Mithras, which swept woman from the temple. Christianity shared the Oriental antipathy to the ministerial service of woman; it banished her from altar and from choir; in darker times it drove her to the very porch of its shrines. ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... This second irruption of Early, and his ruthless destruction of Chambersburg led to many recommendations on the part of General Grant looking to a speedy elimination of the confusion then existing among the Union forces along the upper Potomac, but for a time the ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... expired, under pain of having fifty ducats to pay for every Cagot remaining in Spain at the expiration of that time. The inhabitants of the villages rose up and flogged out any of the miserable race who might be in their neighbourhood; but the French were on their guard against this enforced irruption, and refused to permit them to enter France. Numbers were hunted up into the inhospitable Pyrenees, and there died of starvation, or became a prey to wild beasts. They were obliged to wear both gloves and shoes when they were thus put to flight, otherwise the ...
— An Accursed Race • Elizabeth Gaskell

... was less than five feet nine inches in height, their well-set-up figures and stolid professional faces, gave a business-like, even ominous flavour to the proceedings which chilled the strike leaders to the bone. They would have cheered an irruption of kilted recruits in khaki tunics as the coming of old friends, and would have felt no more than local patriotic hostility towards a detachment of English or Irish soldiers. But these blue men of the Sea Regiment, an integral ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone

... and felicitously worded the rural picture of the opening! how riotous the famous irruption of the New Agers! how adequate the quiet-moral of the end, that the Past is as the Present, and more also! And then he went and ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury

... spoke she glanced disdainfully in the direction of Evander Cloud, who now for the first time since the irruption of the Cavaliers became in any sense an object of public interest. None of the new-comers had paid any heed to the sombre-habited prisoner; Halfman had forgotten his captive in his jealous study of the men who had raised the siege; Thoroughgood, ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... There was an irruption of Jimmie and Johnnie, and three of the Swetnam brothers, including him known as the Ineffable. Jimmie and Johnnie played the role of the absolutely imperturbable with a skill equal to Charlie's own; and only a series of calm "How-do's?" ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... fault of his that he paid so little attention to them. His year, strictly speaking, consists only of the four summer months; and when by any means he is prevented from making the proper use of them, he loses a whole year. Thus the first safe-conduct became useless by the irruption of the Duke of Savoy in 1707; and the second had hardly been obtained, at the end of June 1708, when the said Delisle was insulted by a party of armed men, pretending to act under the authority of the Count ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... so truly interpreted the momentary expression of her features; she blamed herself a little for the feeling that had caused that expression, trying to think how much her aunt might have been troubled with something before the unexpected irruption of the strangers, and again hoping that the remembrance of this little misunderstanding would soon pass away. So she endeavoured to reassure herself, and not to give way to her uncle's tender trembling pressure of her hand, as, at her aunt's bidding, she wished him good night, and returned ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... Italy, upon the river Athesis (Adige), or in Narbonnensian Gaul near Aquae Sextiae (Aix in Provence), where Florus (iii. 3) mentions that the Teutoni defeated by Marius took post in a valley with a river running through it. Of the prodigious numbers of the Cimbri who made this terrible irruption we have an account in Plutarch, who relates that their fighting men were 300,000, with a much greater number of women and ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus

... The irruption of the Northern Barbarians during the latter half of the fourth to about the end of the fifth century so completely disorganised the whole frame of society that the condition of its humblest members could not but be powerfully ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... it with an important defensive position against northern invaders, its control of Delphi and the Amphictyonic council with a useful political instrument. The valour of the Aetolians was conspicuously displayed in 279, when they broke the strength of the Celtic irruption by slaughtering great hordes of marauders. The commemorative festival of the Soteria, which the league established at Delphi, obtained recognition from many leading Greek states. After annexing ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... most dramatic version that exists. The Virgin has been sitting quietly sewing in her little room, poorly enough furnished, with a broken chair by the bed, when suddenly this celestial irruption—this urgent flying angel attended by a horde of cherubim or cupids and heralded by the Holy Spirit. At the first glance you think that the angel has burst through the wall, but that is not so. But as it is, even without that violence, how utterly ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... India conditioned on payments from its prince, at a moment that he is overpowered with a swarm of their demands, without regard to the ability of either prince or people. In fine, by opening an avenue to the irruption of the Nabob of Arcot's creditors and soucars, whom every man, who did not fall in love with oppression and corruption on an experience of the calamities they produced, would have raised wall before wall and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... was not destined to last long. There was again the irruption of exciting news from the highroad; the Mexican leader had been recaptured, and was now safely lodged in Brownsville jail! Those who were previously loud in their praises of the successful horse-thief who had baffled the vigilance of his pursuers were now equally ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte

... also shall march to Montcaliers to-morrow. It is time that the atrocities of Louis XIV. should cease. His soldiers have been worse than an irruption of the Goths both ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... lofty plains of La Mancha and the Castiles, we seem to discern, far inland, from the lengthened declivities, the ancient coast of the Peninsula. This curious phenomenon recalls the traditions of the Samothracians, and other historical testimonies, according to which it is supposed that the irruption of the waters through the Dardanelles, augmenting the basin of the Mediterranean, rent and overflowed the southern part of Europe. If we admit that these traditions owe their origin, not to mere geological reveries, but to the remembrance of some ancient catastrophe, we may conceive ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... literature was interrupted in Europe by the irruption of the Northern nations, who subverted the Roman empire, and erected new kingdoms with new languages. It is not strange that such confusion should suspend literary attention; those who lost, and those who gained dominion, had immediate difficulties to encounter, and immediate miseries to redress, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... disturbed by the sudden irruption of his host and a grizzled, elderly, foxy-faced gentleman with a white moustache, wearing the ribbon of the Legion of Honour in ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke

... ii. 15), a part of them made their way across the "desert of the Slavs," through the lands of the Warni and the Danes to Thoule (i.e. Sweden). This is the first recorded use of the name "Danes." It occurs again in Gregory of Tours (Historiae Francorum, iii. 3) in connexion with an irruption of a Gtish (loosely called Danish) fleet into the Netherlands (c. 520). From this time the use of the name is fairly common. The heroic poetry of the Anglo-Saxons may carry the name further back, though probably it is not very ancient, at ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... considered that his advocacy of a property qualification required this. I have heard him say, too, that women, as a whole, were conservative, and he considered that their admission to the vote would tend to strengthen the defences against the irruption of an unbridled democracy. Whether these views would have stood the test afforded by the present-day militant suffragettes, I am unable to say; for from Sir John Macdonald the knowledge that there ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope

... mysteries, and has post-dated it, from an unwillingness to allow that there was already a strong Catholic element in the Christianity of the first century. Orthodox Catholicism has ignored it from different but equally obvious motives. Modernist Catholicism has in my opinion antedated the irruption of crude sacramentalism into the Church, and has greatly overstated its importance in the religion of the first-century Christians. This school practically denies anything more than a half-accidental continuity between the preaching of the historical Christ, whom they strangely ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... were getting our share when there occurred a new irruption on the scene. This time it was the dreaded peace officers of the I.L.W. The little girl had brought them. They were armed with whips and clubs, and there were a score of them. The little girl danced up and down in anger, the ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London

... fifteen or sixteen days in succession, and without intermission; and nine or ten inches have been known to fall in twenty-four hours. Since we have been here, inclusive of this, we have had four days of wet weather, of which three were continued rain. Both were ushered in by the sudden irruption of heavy mists from below, which soon spread over the country, obscuring every thing. These sudden irruptions occur during the partial breaking up of the rain, during which time the valleys are completely choked up with dense mists, the ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... the human covering (or biosphere) of the planet. Typical high-pressure regions are the Arabian peninsula with its repeated crises of Semitic eruption, and the great Eurasian grasslands. Typical regions of low man-pressure, and repeated irruption, are the South European peninsulas. Occasionally a region plays both parts, alternately accepting inhabitants, and unloading them on to other lands; examples are the Hungarian plain, Scandinavia, and Britain. Others again can ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various

... the cue and show me what a past-master of the game could do with those balls. I did as required. I began with the diffidence proper to my ignorant estate, and when I had finished my inning all the balls were in the pockets and Dolby was burying me under a volcanic irruption of acid sarcasms. ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain

... in her Sunday clothes, only she had gained self-possession. She talked now. In the midst of artistic discussions into which Heurtebise passionately threw himself, with arbitrary assertions, brutal contempt, or blind enthusiasm, the false and honeyed voice of his wife would suddenly make irruption, forcing him to listen to some idle reasoning or foolish observation invariably outside of the subject of discussion. Embarrassed and worried, he would cast us an imploring glance, and strive to resume the interrupted conversation. Then at last, wearied out by her familiar ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet

... and annexed to the United States of Mexico in the year 1825, and the laws and constitution of that republic extended over it. But it is an abuse of words to say that any law existed from that time onward. The confusion produced by the irruption of this horde of vagabonds continued uninterrupted, and it involved, in one chaotic mass, law, order, and every public and private right. The history of the country is inexplicable, and its public archives are ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... faces that denied any uneasiness felt in the approach; here they closed numerous doors carefully behind them—all save the door that connected the place, as by a straight tented corridor, with the outer world, and, encouraging thus the irruption of society, imitated the aperture through which the bedizened performers of the circus are poured into the ring. The great part Mrs. Verver had socially played came luckily, Maggie could make out, to her assistance; she had "personal friends"—Charlotte's personal friends had ever been, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... sequence of time was artificial, and the sequence of thought was chaos, he turned at last to the sequence of force; and thus it happened that, after ten years' pursuit, he found himself lying in the Gallery of Machines at the Great Exposition of 1900, his historical neck broken by the sudden irruption of forces totally new. ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... home. You will continue to direct here as usual. Mr. Hobhouse is gone to Naples: I should have run down there too for a week, but for the quantity of English whom I heard of there. I prefer hating them at a distance; unless an earthquake, or a good real irruption of Vesuvius, were ensured to reconcile me to ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... now exist on the summit of either mountain. But Mr. James Bryce, who made the last ascent, in 1876, seems to think that there is no sufficient reason why craters could not have previously existed, and been filled up by their own irruptions. There is no record of any irruption in historical times. The only thing approaching it was the earthquake which shook the mountain in 1840, accompanied by subterranean rumblings, and destructive blasts of wind. The Tatar village of Arghuri and a Kurdish encampment on the northeast slope were entirely destroyed by the precipitated ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

... operation. No lakes are interposed between the mountain torrents of the upper basis of the Tigris and the Euphrates and their lower courses. Hence, heavy rain, or an unusually rapid thaw in the uplands, gives rise to the sudden irruption of a vast volume of water which not even the rapid Tigris, still less its more sluggish companion, can carry off in time to prevent violent and dangerous overflows. Without an elaborate system of canalisation, providing an escape for such sudden ...
— Hasisadra's Adventure - Essay #7 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley

... in Britain, carried a great part of his army across the sea to attempt a conquest of Gaul and Spain. Neither he nor his soldiers ever returned, and in consequence the Roman garrison in the island was deplorably weakened. Early in the fifth century an irruption of barbarians gave full employment to the army which defended Gaul, so that it was impossible to replace the forces which had followed Maximus by fresh troops from the Continent. The Roman Empire was in fact breaking up. The defence ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner

... they touched at two small islands which lie nearly opposite Communipaw, and which are said to have been brought into existence about the time of the great irruption of the Hudson, when it broke through the Highlands and made its way to the ocean.[27] For, in this tremendous uproar of the waters we are told that many huge fragments of rock and land were rent from the mountains and swept down by this runaway river, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... my cages. When expelled from her dwelling, the Spider is more timid and more vulnerable to attack. Moreover, while hampered by a narrow shaft, the operator would not wield her lancet with the precision called for by her designs. The bold irruption shows us once again, more plainly than the tussles on my table, the Lycosa's reluctance to sink her fangs into her enemy's body. When the two are face to face at the bottom of the lair, then or never is the moment to have it out with the foe. The Tarantula is in her own house, with all ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre

... a soldier to take care of himself in all circumstances. Staff officers knew nothing of the various departments and the methods of obtaining supplies. The Government had not been able to provide barrack accommodations for the immense irruption of 'Northern barbarians,' and the men were stowed like sheep in any unoccupied buildings that could be obtained. These were generally storehouses, without any cooking arrangements, so that when provisions were procured, no one knew ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... which their raw levies might gather, in case the Boers seemed likely to press them hard. But this was an afterthought. When the movement began it was a purely Johannesburg movement, and it was intended to bear that character to the end, and to avoid all appearance of being an English irruption.[85] ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... the deciding point of the battle. The Austrian right, already holding its own with difficulty, was crumpled up and forced to fall back hastily. The other half of the army, isolated by the irruption, threw itself back and endeavoured to make a fresh stand at spots defended by batteries ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty

... correctly reasons that they must have excited a more powerful action upon terrestrial quadrupeds than upon marine animals. "As these revolutions," he says, "have consisted chiefly in changes of the bed of the sea, and as the waters must have destroyed all the quadrupeds which they reached if their irruption over the land was general, they must have destroyed the entire class, or, if confined only to certain continents at one time, they must have destroyed at least all the species inhabiting these continents, without having the same ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard

... parts with forest; there the host of Lothair resided among his lands and people, and himself dwelt in a stone and castellated building, a portion of which was of immemorial antiquity, and where he could rally his forces and defend himself in case of the irruption and invasion of the desert tribes. And here one morn arrived a messenger from Jerusalem summoning Lothair back to that city, in consequence of the intended departure ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli

... they went and to Mrs. Marsh, who, in reply to Clover's letter, had written that she must make room for them somehow, though for the life of her she couldn't say how. It proved to be in two small back rooms. An irruption of Eastern invalids had filled the house to overflowing, and new faces met them at every turn. Two or three of the last summer's inmates had died during their stay,—one of them the very sick man whose room Mrs. Watson had coveted. ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge

... people of our cities, and those of the country in their turn, breaking with the good traditions. The mind, warped by alcohol, by the passion for gambling, and by unhealthy literature, contracts little by little perverted tastes. Artificial life makes irruption into communities once simple in their pleasures, and it is like phylloxera to the vine. The robust tree of rustic joy finds its sap ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner

... plucked up courage, and taking advantage of a smooth sea she ventured over the Straits, and set off for Milan, if not to recover her fugitive better half, at all events to terrify her rival and disturb their joys. The advent of the Cannizzaro woman was to the Visconti like the irruption of the Huns of old. She fled to a villa near Milan, which she proceeded to garrison and fortify, but finding that the other was not provided with any implements for a siege, and did not stir from Milan, she ventured to return to ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... to the threat; but the men rushing in, seized some sisters, who, terrified out of their wits by this irruption, at once gave the information demanded, and the men made their way to the cell where ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty

... came and wooed them and offered them rest in their embraces,"—a conceit which might possibly be mistaken by a modern reader for the fancy of Hans Andersen, but which is really something quite different, not "pathetic fallacy," but an irruption of metaphorical rhetoric from the poetical dictionary. There is another metaphorical flare-up on the next page, equally amazing, in ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker

... eyes, but imagined, in his sleep, that his palace and gardens were overwhelmed by an inundation, and waked with all the terrours of a man struggling in the water. He composed himself again to rest, but was affrighted by an imaginary irruption into his kingdom; and striving, as is usual in dreams, without ability to move, fancied himself betrayed to his enemies, and again started up with horrour ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... Such an irruption of barbarians might be expected to extirpate Christianity from the earth; but help came from an unexpected quarter. The woman had retired to her secure retreat, and the earth swallowed up the flood. Those barbarous tribes were absorbed ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss

... the echelon has usually one cell further advanced into the corium than its neighbours, and may be termed the apical cell. The fine basement membrane separating epithelium from corium is still clearly evident. This epidermal irruption of the corium takes place at definite points right round the foot. It is extremely probable, however, that it commences first at the ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks

... life. The fever was often accompanied with lethargy or delirium; the bodies of the sick were covered with black pustules or carbuncles, the symptoms of immediate death; and in the constitutions too feeble to produce an irruption, the vomiting of blood was followed by a mortification of the bowels. To pregnant women the plague was generally mortal: yet one infant was drawn alive from his dead mother, and three mothers survived the loss of their infected foetus. Youth was the most perilous season; and the female sex was less ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... Cavalry and gate at Carlton House, as well as the posse of constables in the court-yard, and drove our horses up the flight of stone steps into the salon, though the guards, beefeaters, and constables arrayed themselves against this irruption of Cossacks, and actually came to the charge. The Prince, however, in the noblest manner waved his hand, and we were allowed to form a circle round the Regent while Blucher had the blue ribbon placed on his shoulders, ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey

... an action for libel, but nothing came of it; it was easier to strike at the girls, and a few days later Fleet Street was enlivened by the irruption of a crowd of match-girls, demanding Annie Besant. I couldn't speechify to match-girls in Fleet Street, so asked that a deputation should come and explain what they wanted. Up came three women and told their story: ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... as, when the old world was about to accept Christianity, a deluge of Oriental and barbaric superstitions swept across men's minds, so immediately before the dawn of Greek philosophy there came an irruption of mysticism and of spiritual fears. We may suppose that the Orphic poems were collected, edited and probably interpolated, in this dark hour of Greece. "To me," says Lobeck, "it appears that the verses may be ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... temporary "grouch" against the Jews was partly due to the irruption into her Society of three new and attractive Israelites of her own sex—an event happening about that time. In one of these newcomers, Terry, it appears, was somewhat interested, and Marie has often admitted that her philosophy ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood

... by a malignant disorder somewhat resembling the smallpox and measles, which raged in the settlement, the severe pain he suffered from the virulence of the disorder, as the irruption in his face struck inward, and assuming a cancerous form destroyed his upper jaw bone, he became impatient, forsook his professions of confidence in the Saviour, and sought for help in heathenish practices, ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous

... irruption of the Drilgoes, the priests were seeking to propitiate their gods by sacrificing the three strangers whom they held responsible for ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various

... his country, John van Witt had just given in his resignation as councillor pensionary of Holland. He wrote to Ruyter on the 5th of August, as follows: "The capture of the towns on the Rhine in so short a time, the irruption of the enemy as far as the banks of the Yssel, and the total loss of the provinces of Gueldres, Utrecht, and Over-Yssel, almost without resistance and through unheard-of poltroonery, if not treason, on the part of certain people, have ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... Vedas, the Zend-Avesta, and the Homeric songs, will be willing to admit that these wandering barbarians may have had minds capable of the highest efforts to which the human intellect is known to have attained. Yet if an irruption of Semitic or Turanian conquerors had swept that infant tribe from the earth, no trace of its existence beyond a few flint implements, and perhaps some fragments of pottery, would have remained to show that ...
— Hiawatha and the Iroquois Confederation • Horatio Hale

... namely, that this "closed house" was the last, in the order of time, erected in this pueblo, and had not been emptied of its core and brought into use when the Spanish irruption forced the people to abandon this pueblo. It would fix the period of its construction at or after A. D. 1520, thus settling the question of its modern date and removing one of the delusions concerning the antiquity of the ruins in Yucatan and Central ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... Italy to Spain; through the Diana of the Spanish Montemayor it passed to France. After a period of turbulent strife there was a fascination in visions of a peace, into which, if warfare entered, the strange irruption only enhanced an habitual calm. A whole generation waited long to learn the issue of the passion of Celadon and Astree. The romance, of which the earliest part appeared in 1610, or earlier, was not completely published until 1627, when its author was no longer living.[1] The scene is ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... his oniony boarding-house, a few steps along, deeply marveling at the irruption of magnificence into the neighborhood in the brief year since ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... seems to have scarcely reached the mountainous districts of that kingdom; and Scotland too would perhaps have remained free, had not the Scots availed themselves of the discomfiture of the English to make an irruption into their territory, which terminated in the destruction of their army, by the plague and by the sword, and the extension of the pestilence, through those who escaped, over the ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker

... as well as of offensive means. His personal assault on Firmstone had met with defeat. In the mental rout that followed he was casting about to find means of concealing from others that which he could not hide from himself. The irruption of Bennie and Zephyr threatened disaster even to this forlorn hope. Firmstone knew what was coming. Hartwell could not even guess. As he had seen Firmstone as his first object, so now he saw Zephyr. Blindly as he had attacked Firmstone, so now he lowered his ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason

... I shall have alarmed your Mother by my irruption. Forgive me for that and all my exactions from you. If the next month were over, I should not have to trouble ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... called Roumains; and if you say Roman at once, they will be still better pleased. They were in old time the overflow of Wallachia, now forming part of the Roumanian Principality. The first historical irruption of the Wallacks was about the end of the fourteenth century, when they became a terrible pest to the German settlers in Transylvania, dreaded by them as much as Turk or Tartar. They burned and pillaged the lands and villages of the peaceful dwellers ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse



Words linked to "Irruption" :   ingress, irrupt, occurrence, happening, outbreak, entry, incoming, entrance, entering, epidemic, natural event, occurrent, recrudescence, eruption, population growth



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