Word.ws English Dictionary

xenism

xenism noun: a word used in utterances of a language but generally marked as foreign.

Noun

xenism (plural xenisms)

  1. A word used in utterances of a language but generally marked as foreign.
    • The first stage is when a word from one language is used in an utterance of another language in order to create a somewhat exotic effect. At this stage, the word is not a borrowing, but rather what they term a xenism. An example of a xenism used in an English sentence would be At the harbour, we...2013, Mari Jones, Ishtla Singh, Exploring Language Change, Taylor & Francis, published 2005, →ISBN, page 34
    • My objective was to collect all loanwords, such that this work is as complete as possible, though some words may not be commonly used by speakers of a given language that seem to be pure Arabic xenisms (see Swahili hamsa ‘five’ < ḫamsa 841).2020 November 30, Sergio Baldi, Dictionary of Arabic Loanwords in the Languages of Central and East Africa (Handbuch der Orientalistik; Erste Abteilung: Der Nahe und der Mittlere Osten; 145), Leiden...

Forms of xenism

pluralxenisms

Origin of xenism

Borrowed from French xénisme, from Ancient Greek ξενισμός (xenismós, “strangeness, novelty”).

Questions about xenism

What does xenism mean?
Xenism means a word used in utterances of a language but generally marked as foreign.
What part of speech is xenism?
Xenism is a noun.
What is the plural of xenism?
The plural of xenism is xenisms.

Words near xenism in the dictionary

  1. xenide
  2. xenides
  3. xeniid
  4. xeniids
  5. xenipentone
  6. xenism
  7. xenismoi
  8. xenismos
  9. xenisms
  10. xenisthmid
  11. xenisthmids

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: xenism (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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