English

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Pronunciation

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Verb

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Trojan-horse (third-person singular simple present Trojan-horses, present participle Trojan-horsing, simple past and past participle Trojan-horsed)

  1. (transitive, idiomatic) To introduce slyly, to sneak in, to subvert.
    • 2012 May 20, Nathan Rabin, “TV: Review: THE SIMPSONS (CLASSIC): “Marge Gets A Job” (season 4, episode 7; originally aired 11/05/1992)”, in The Onion AV Club[1]:
      We all know how genius “Kamp Krusty,” “A Streetcar Named Marge,” “Homer The Heretic,” “Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie” and “Mr. Plow” are, but even the relatively unheralded episodes offer wall-to-wall laughs and some of the smartest, darkest, and weirdest gags ever Trojan-horsed into a network cartoon with a massive family audience.
    • 2018 June 26, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, “Jonathan Franzen Is Fine With All of It”, in The New York Times[2], →ISSN:
      Suddenly he realized that the arguments and social criticism he wanted to assert [] could live and breathe on their own. He didn’t have to Trojan-horse them into his novels’ characters or plot points anymore.
    • 2019, Pamela Kole, Mind Games[3], PublishDrive:
      They have successfully Trojan-horsed into your heart and mind, and that is exactly where they want to be so they can control you most effectively.
  2. (transitive, computer security) To install a Trojan horse on (a system).
  3. (transitive, computer security) To install a Trojan horse on the system of (a person or organization).
    • 1992, UNIX Security Symposium III: Proceedings, USENIX Association, →ISBN, page 146:
      A world writable file or two later, and a customer has been trojan-horsed.