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FOREIGNER
Pronunciation (US): | (GB): |
Irregular inflected form: foreigner
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A person who comes from a foreign country; someone who does not owe allegiance to your country
Synonyms:
alien; foreigner; noncitizen; outlander
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("foreigner" is a kind of...):
traveler; traveller (a person who changes location)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "foreigner"):
au pair (a young foreigner who lives with a family in return for doing light housework)
deportee; exile (a person who is expelled from home or country by authority)
gringo (a Latin American (disparaging) term for foreigners (especially Americans and Englishmen))
import; importee (an imported person brought from a foreign country)
metic (an alien who paid a fee to reside in an ancient Greek city)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Someone who is excluded from or is not a member of a group
Synonyms:
foreigner; outsider
Classified under:
Nouns denoting people
Hypernyms ("foreigner" is a kind of...):
alien; stranger; unknown (anyone who does not belong in the environment in which they are found)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "foreigner"):
transalpine (one living on or coming from the other side of the Alps from Italy)
Context examples:
You see, Watson, we have come already upon two sets of foreigners—one at Wisteria Lodge and one at High Gable—so our gaps are beginning to close.
(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I was still looking at them, and also at intervals examining the teachers—none of whom precisely pleased me; for the stout one was a little coarse, the dark one not a little fierce, the foreigner harsh and grotesque, and Miss Miller, poor thing! looked purple, weather-beaten, and over-worked—when, as my eye wandered from face to face, the whole school rose simultaneously, as if moved by a common spring.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Was this a customary incident in the life of a solicitor's clerk sent out to explain the purchase of a London estate to a foreigner?
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
The language of this country being always upon the flux, the struldbrugs of one age do not understand those of another; neither are they able, after two hundred years, to hold any conversation (farther than by a few general words) with their neighbours the mortals; and thus they lie under the disadvantage of living like foreigners in their own country.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
His friend and secretary, Mr. Lucas, is undoubtedly a foreigner, chocolate brown, wily, suave, and catlike, with a poisonous gentleness of speech.
(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
For, said he, as flourishing a condition as we may appear to be in to foreigners, we labour under two mighty evils: a violent faction at home, and the danger of an invasion, by a most potent enemy, from abroad.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
He is either a foreigner or has lived long in the tropics, for he is yellow and sapless, but tough as whipcord.
(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
It is always possible that she never reached London, or that she has passed through it, but the former is improbable, as, with their system of registration, it is not easy for foreigners to play tricks with the Continental police; and the latter is also unlikely, as these rogues could not hope to find any other place where it would be as easy to keep a person under restraint.
(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)