Word.ws English Dictionary

Oxfam

/ˈɒksfæm/

Oxfam proper noun: a United Kingdom-based charity focused on alleviating global poverty and operating a chain of charity shops.

Proper noun

Oxfam

  1. A United Kingdom-based charity focused on alleviating global poverty and operating a chain of charity shops.
    • [E]xquisitely torn jeans adorned the 'Hard Times' cover of The Face, while the long macs and second-hand suits of the 'Oxfam brigade', with their doomy Joy Division rock and George Orwell haircuts, made a suitable fanfare for the advent of the dreaded 1984. In one sense Oxfam chic was a lament for...1992, Juliet Ash, Elizabeth Wilson, Chic Thrills: A Fashion Reader, page 42
    • In the town center of the village I live in, there is an Oxfam shop, a Salvation Army shop, a Heart Disease UK shop, and a Cancer Research shop. They sell the usual thrift store stuff of used clothes and books.2012, Alana Muir, An American Guide to Britishness, page 34

Origin of Oxfam

Syllabic abbreviation of Oxford Committee for Famine Relief: originally the telegraphic address of the organisation.

Questions about Oxfam

What does Oxfam mean?
Oxfam means a United Kingdom-based charity focused on alleviating global poverty and operating a chain of charity shops.
What part of speech is Oxfam?
Oxfam is a proper noun.
How do you pronounce Oxfam?
Oxfam is pronounced /ˈɒksfæm/.

Words near Oxfam in the dictionary

  1. oxeye herrings
  2. oxeyed
  3. oxeyes
  4. Oxf
  5. Oxf.
  6. Oxfam
  7. oxfendazole
  8. oxfenicine
  9. oxflesh
  10. oxflies
  11. oxfloxacin

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Oxfam (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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Cite this entry: “Oxfam.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/oxfam. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.