Word.ws English Dictionary

xenisms

xenisms is the plural of xenism.

Meaning of xenism

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

Questions about xenisms

What is xenisms the plural of?
Xenisms is the plural of xenism.

Words near xenisms in the dictionary

  1. xeniids
  2. xenipentone
  3. xenism
  4. xenismoi
  5. xenismos
  6. xenisms
  7. xenisthmid
  8. xenisthmids
  9. Xenite
  10. Xenites
  11. xenium

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: xenisms (page history and authors); 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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