English

Noun

port of entry ‎(plural ports of entry)

1. A harbor, airport, or border crossing where goods or immigrants enter a country.
   • 2014, John T. Jones, The Economic Impact of Transborder Trucking Regulations, ISBN 1135678308:

     The Motor Carrier Act that opened the U.S. side of the U.S.-Mexican border shows that on average 46.4. local trucking and courier service establishments left each port of entry.

2. The location or mechanism by which a foreign entity gains entry into the body or self.
   • 2011, Andrea Tinelli, Laparoscopic Entry, ISBN 0857299808:

     As it was becoming apparent in the development of Single port Access that we could begin applying the one port of entry approach to multiple procedures, applying it to cholecystectomies was simply a matter of time.

   • 2010, C. A. Genco, ‎Lee Wetzler, & ‎Lee M. Wetzler, Neisseria: Molecular Mechanisms of Pathogenesis, ISBN 1904455514, page 79:

     Furthermore when the bacteria become pathogenic, the nasopharynx is the port-of-entry of the infection.

   • 1995, Daniel N. Stern, The Motherhood Constellation: A Unified View of Parent-infant Psychotherapy, ISBN 1855752018, page 128:

     Other psychoanalytically inspired mother-baby psychotherapeutic approaches, such as that practiced by Serge Lebovici and his colleagues in Paris, freely use the transference as a source of shared clinical focus and as a port of entry into the system.