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inroad🔊

(military, also figuratively) An advance into enemy territory, an attempted invasion; an encroachment, an incursion.

💬 Quotations
While from their lovely climate, the poets native to their sweet south, the old ruins hallowed with the memories of other days, the lovely paintings, the still diviner statues, which had been their constant companions—the character had imperceptibly caught a tone of romance, calculated long to resist the inroads of worldliness and deceit.
[A] certain English colonel passed though the former's country with a body of men-at-arms, on the very day when the O'Mahonys had made an inroad upon our territories, and carried off a frightful plunder of our flocks and herds.

(figuratively) Initial progress made toward accomplishing a goal or solving a problem.

(archaic) To make advances or incursions.

💬 Quotations
[T]his is the first war that has befallen in my time, and no inimy has yet inroaded far enough into the Colony, to be reached by an arm even longer than mine.

(obsolete) To make an inroad into (something).