foreign correspondent

Noun

foreign correspondent (plural foreign correspondents)

1. A reporter or freelance journalist who is based in a foreign country, and who provides news reports and/or commentary from that place.
   • Oscar Vincent spent several years abroad, after graduation, acting as foreign correspondent of his father's paper.1874, Horatio Alger, chapter 36, in Risen from the Ranks
   • "Couldn't you be foreign correspondent for your newspaper?"
     "We've good men in every European capital now. They've no use for more."1922, Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton, chapter 35, in Black Oxen
2. (dated) A clerical employee responsible for communicating with an organization's stakeholders in other countries and for processing transactions involving them; a firm employed by an organization to assume such responsibilities.
   • When the government, or those who acted under them, contracted with a merchant for a remittance to some foreign country, he would naturally endeavour to pay his foreign correspondent, upon whom he granted a bill, by sending abroad rather commodities than gold and silver.1776, Adam Smith, chapter 1, in The Wealth of Nations
   • The secrets of business—complicated and often dismal mysteries—were buried in his breast, and never came out of their sepulchre, save now and then to scare Joe Scott, or give a start to some foreign correspondent: […]1849, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], “Noah and Moses”, in Shirley. A Tale. […], volume I, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →OCLC, page 176