foreign

adjective · noun

Simple meaning

Located outside a country or place.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

fawruhn

Say the bold part a little louder.

US device voice

IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈfɔɹən

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

adjective

Located outside a country or place, especially one's own.
Relating to or originating in or characteristic of another place or part of the world
Originating from, characteristic of, belonging to, or being a citizen of a country or place other than the one under discussion.
Relating to a different nation.
Not characteristic of or naturally taken in by an organism or system.
Belonging to a different organization, company etc.

noun

Short for various phrases, including foreign language, foreign parts, and foreign service.
A foreign person, particularly
A foreign vehicle, particularly
A foreign area, particularly
now informal
A foreigner: a person from another country.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty: A1 · Beginner
Frequency: Very Common
Typical Use: Everyday English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: Located outside a country or place, especially one's own.

Used this way, foreign is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone: Neutral
Formality: Neutral
Intensity: Not strongly marked
How common: Moderately common
Connotation: No strong connotation
Usage feel: Neutral and straightforward

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use foreign

“There are many more foreign students in Europe since the Erasmus scheme started.”adjective
“My bank charges me $2.50 every time I use a foreign ATM.”adjective
“It was completely foreign to their way of thinking.”adjective

Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

foreign capital

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Inflected forms

Grammatical variations of the same word.

foreignernounInflected form
A person who comes from a foreign country.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

foreign billnounCompound term
A bill of exchange that is drawn in one country and made payable in another.
foreign correspondentnounCompound term
A journalist who sends news reports and commentary from a foreign country for publication or broadcast.
foreign countrynounCompound term
Any state of which one is not a citizen.
foreign direct investmentnounCompound term
Investing in United States businesses by foreign citizens (often involves stock ownership of the business).
foreign draftnounCompound term
A bill of exchange that is drawn in one country and made payable in another.
foreign exchangenounCompound term
The system by which one currency is exchanged for another.

Related Words

Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.

abroadadverb
ambassadornoun
exchangenoun

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: located outside a country or place

alienstrangeArchaicoverseas

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.