Word.ws English Dictionary

exophonic

exophonic adjective: writing in a language other than one's native language.

Adjective

exophonic (not comparable)

  1. Writing in a language other than one's native language.
    • The role of German as medium for exophonic writers has actually been growing strongly in recent years.2011, David Bellos, chapter 19, in Is that a Fish in Your Ear?
    • The adopted language is typically acquired as an adult; exophonic writers are not bilingual in the sense that they grew up speaking two languages, and indeed do not necessarily achieve the type of spoken fluency associated with the term "bilingualism."2013, Yoko Tawada, Yoko Tawada's Portrait of a Tongue

Origin of exophonic

From exo- + -phonic.

Questions about exophonic

What does exophonic mean?
Exophonic means writing in a language other than one's native language.
What part of speech is exophonic?
Exophonic is an adjective.

Words near exophonic in the dictionary

  1. exophenotype
  2. exophenotypes
  3. exophilic
  4. exophily
  5. exophobic
  6. exophonic
  7. exophony
  8. exophora
  9. exophoras
  10. exophoria
  11. exophorias

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: exophonic (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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