foreignfor‧eign /ˈfɒrɪn $ ˈfɔː-, ˈfɑː-/ ●●● S3 W1 adjective 
foreign students Can you speak any foreign languages? the success of foreign companies in various industries I thought she sounded foreign. transactions in foreign currencies2[only before noun] involving or dealing with other countries OPP domestic: America’s foreign policyforeign investment/trade etc Foreign competition provides consumers with a greater variety of goods. our budget for foreign aid (=financial help to countries in need) the Chinese Foreign Minister3be foreign to somebody formal a)to seem strange to someone as the result of not being known or understood SYN be alien to somebody: The language of finance is quite foreign to me. b)to be not typical of someone’s usual character: Aggression is completely foreign to his nature.4foreign body/matter/object formal a piece of dirt, glass, or other material that has got inside something, especially someone’s body, and that should not be there: cells that are designed to attack and destroy foreign bodies—foreignness noun [uncountable]
WORD ORIGINforeign
Origin:
1200-1300 Old French forein, from Latin foris ‘outside’EXAMPLES FROM OTHER DICTIONARIES
- "Journey of Hope" won the Oscar in 1991 for best foreign-language film.
- America's foreign policy
- Can you speak a foreign language?
- efforts to increase foreign investment
- Some of the hotels accept foreign currency.
- The budget calls for cuts in foreign aid.
- The tour went through seven foreign countries in two weeks.
- Toyota is the leading foreign car company.
- International investment involves the added dimension of dealing in foreign currencies, providing the opportunity for additional profits.
- The reserves are composed of convertible foreign currencies, gold and International Monetary Fund special drawing rights.
- The soldier threatens me in a foreign language, so that his precise meaning is lost but his hostility is coruscating.
- The value of foreign trade fell by 8 percent.
- There was no address, and the writing was in a foreign language.
Longman Language Activatornot from your own country
not from your own country or not connected with your own country: · Can you speak a foreign language?· Some of the hotels accept foreign currency.· efforts to increase foreign investment
especially British from or connected with a foreign country, especially one that is a long way away: · The university has a large number of overseas students.· There has been an increase in overseas trade during the last year.
from another country or from other countries: · There's a shortage of medical staff, so a lot of the doctors here are from abroad.· She seemed to receive a lot of mail from abroad.· Listening to radio broadcasts from abroad is still a criminal offense in this country.
from a different country someone who comes from another country - many people consider it impolite to call someone a foreigner: · A lot of foreigners work here illegally.· Saleem felt that people were suspicious of him because he was a foreigner.· About 40 million foreigners visited the US last year.
someone who lives or works in your country, but who comes from another country - used especially in legal and official contexts: · Some aliens may qualify for citizenship under the new law.illegal aliens: · The law makes it easier to find and deport illegal aliens.
especially British also expat British informal someone who has gone to live in a foreign country, especially because they have a job there: · I was in Spain for over a year, but most of my friends were expatriates.· Schmidt was a German expatriate who had been living in Portugal since 1989.
in or to a different country in or to a foreign country: · Katya will make her first trip abroad next month.live/work/study etc abroad: · Our daughter wants to study abroad for a year.be abroad: · Mr Harris is abroad on business this week.
in or to a foreign country, especially one that is a long distance from your own: · Much of the wood harvested in the northwest is shipped overseas.go/work/travel etc overseas: · Douglas often travelled overseas when he was in the army.
to leave your own country in order to live permanently in another country: · The couple emigrated in 1987 and are back here on holiday to see friends and relatives.emigrate from/to: · My grandparents emigrated from Italy.· Our son and his wife, Jenny, emigrated to Australia in 1988.
COLLOCATIONS FROM THE ENTRY America’s foreign policy Foreign competition provides consumers with a greater variety of goods. our budget for foreign aid (=financial help to countries in need) the Chinese Foreign Minister Aggression is completely foreign to his nature.COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES The dollar is expected to fall in the foreign exchange markets. a meeting of EU foreign ministers a Defence Ministry spokesman growing fears that English football players will be lured away to foreign shores
America’s foreign policy Foreign competition provides consumers with a greater variety of goods. our budget for foreign aid (=financial help to countries in need) the Chinese Foreign Minister Aggression is completely foreign to his nature.· I got a call from a man with a foreign accent.
(=events in other countries)· the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
· The development of the continent is now dependent on foreign aid.
· America's electronics industry is keen to fight off foreign competitors.
(=reporting on other countries)· He became a top BBC foreign correspondent.
(=not your own country)· Have you ever worked in a foreign country?
(=the type of money that other countries use)· You can buy foreign currency at the post office.
(=money in the currency of a foreign country, that a country gets by selling goods abroad)· Timber is a vital source of foreign exchange earnings for the country.
(=a film in a language that is not the audience’s native language)· Foreign-language films seldom do well at the box office.
· There has been renewed competition from foreign firms.
The dollar is expected to fall in the foreign exchange markets.· Foreign imports into Britain continued to grow in the 1970s.
· The government is eager to attract foreign investment to fund building projects.
· He found learning a foreign language extremely difficult.
· Foreign learners of English often find it difficult to hear the unstressed parts of a word.
a meeting of EU foreign ministers a Defence Ministry spokesman· Support for human rights is a key element in our foreign policy.
· He was charged with spying for a foreign power.
· African countries want the foreign press to report African affairs.
growing fears that English football players will be lured away to foreign shores· The activities of foreign spies have increased.
· The University welcomes applications from overseas students.
· Millions of foreign tourists visit the capital every year.
· International trade is essential for long-term economic growth.
· The job offers opportunities for foreign travel.
· He demanded that all foreign troops be withdrawn from the region.
COLLOCATIONS FROM THE CORPUSNOUN· They therefore put forward a wide spectrum of policies to cover all politically significant aspects of national life, as well as foreign affairs.· There is little to fight over except narrow policy niceties that interest only foreign affairs buffs and bore most voters.· Clanricarde was appointed under-secretary of state for foreign affairs in 1826, a post he resigned after Canning's death in 1827.· But as an institution, Congress remains largely detached from foreign affairs.· However, Truman was persuaded by Acheson to appoint Dulles in April 1950 as consultant on foreign affairs.· Supervisor of the military and foreign affairs.· Throughout the 1960s, politicians kept up a rather futile polemic as to whether the General cared about anything except foreign affairs.· As veteran senators and representatives with strong international experience leave Congress, their knowledge of foreign affairs is simply not being replaced.
· Few foreign aid workers have dared to venture into Helmund province.· The budget allocates $ 19. 45 billion to State Department operations, foreign aid, peacekeeping and international lending institutions.· Major budget cuts, including foreign aid by 76 percent, defence by 10 percent.· Whether the foreign aid will be enough to stabilize the country remains to be seen.· This summary of findings does not refer to all foreign aid projects.· We give about $ 425 million a year in foreign aid for family planning.· To unblock the well or drill a new one would require a new allocation of foreign aid.
· The reader should ascertain the degree of foreign bank involvement in his own country.· Whether the foreign banks were more user-friendly than we, I do not know.· So far $ 200m has been found in foreign bank accounts.· The early enthusiasm of foreign banks and investors waned as the government caved in to their opposition.· Its membership embraces foreign banks and investment houses.· In future, enterprises using foreign capital would be allowed foreign currency accounts in the State Bank or a foreign bank.
· Eyes inflamed from trauma or after foreign bodies have been removed.· A group of prisoners was carefully picking foreign bodies from a mound of rice before cooking.· We describe two cases of accidental aspiration of a foreign body after use of a metered dose inhaler.· Tell everyone to watch out for a foreign body?· Could there be a foreign body in there?· Foreign bodies A small proportion of vaginal discharges are due to foreign bodies.· The intra-uterine device is a foreign body, as are the tampons used to absorb the menstrual flow.· Discussion Aspiration of a foreign body during use of an inhaler has been infrequently reported since the first report in 1981.
· More recently, multinationals and foreign capital, with all their implications, have made vertical upward mobility difficult.· Attracting the banks are the resurgent economy and reforms that have opened up industries to foreign capital.· But debtor economies were bled to minimise those losses, and they were restructured to suit foreign capital.· Yet the campaign for foreign capital has foundered, except in the mining sector.· Nevertheless, stations reflected the same combination of foreign capital and nationalist pride.· How do you attract very large quantities of foreign capital?· Catalonia has offices in dozens of foreign capitals.· Yet, however disembodied, these are still transactions involving foreign capital.
· The foreign company would also assist the Forestry Department in collecting royalty and tax payments from the timber companies.· Do those provisions apply in the case of a foreign company?· Local bureaucracies could easily hin-der foreign companies and help the local businesses they had hoped to compete with.
· Instead both firms were to compete in the market against one another and against foreign competition.· For Peter Pan is foreign competition.· The main causes are new products, new technology and foreign competition.· As the production of automobiles by domestic manufacturers fell due to foreign competition, Ramsey lost orders.· The bond market, for example, may not be opened to foreign competition until 1995.· While other larger steel producers had struggled and often failed against foreign competition, Nucor succeeded.· Heavy industry was quailing before foreign competition, but the decline in traditional female areas of work was less steep.
· And she told me some character called Steve produced a gun when Newman, the foreign correspondent, interrupted their tete-a-tete.· It was all preparation for her dream job: a foreign correspondent, roaming the world in a trench coat.· Bob Newman, foreign correspondent, frowned as he drove his Mercedes 280E across the loneliness of Suffolk in February.· Government officials failed also in another hide-and-seek game with foreign correspondents.· Mark had idolised foreign correspondents ever since he began in newspapers.· The access of foreign correspondents to government officials and documents is comparable to that in the United States.· And in Bosnia-Herzegovina journalists continue to work in circumstances which are so threatening that most foreign correspondents covering the conflict have fled.· Even in the rarefied world of foreign correspondents, Simon is a standout.
· The war, which broke out in August 1998, involves a number of foreign countries and several rebel groups.· The future was always a foreign country, always took him by surprise and was always challenged and met with a charge.· I look around me, I feel like this is a foreign country.· Irene sighed and shook her head: no visit to a foreign country seemed complete without bargains to carry home as trophies.· Mr Ryan declined to name the embassies or the foreign countries he had approached or to specify what sums had been raised.· Macci's students include 11 from foreign countries, among them Gerrard Quinland from London.· Computers are like a foreign country in many ways.
· This will lead to an inflow of foreign currency.· The reserves are composed of convertible foreign currencies, gold and International Monetary Fund special drawing rights.· Kumar was arrested on Saturday last week, charged with violating foreign currency laws.· But Schro der's leftwing government adopted a less rigid stance on foreign currency.· This market constitutes the Eurocurrency market plus deposits in domestic and foreign currency held by non-residents.· If you are involved in foreign trade, you can benefit from a foreign currency overdraft or loan.· It provided 55 percent of foreign currency revenue and employed 6 percent of the active population.· No foreign warehouses were necessary and orders were invoiced in the appropriate foreign currency.
· The first column shows that the poorest regions tend to have the highest ratios of foreign debt to social product.· Hammadi said that the budget would reduce by US$2,495 million foreign debts including new loans expected in 1990.· He adds for good measure that the public-sector deficit would be wiped out if the country stopped paying its foreign debts.· The government was also in difficulty over payments on its foreign debt, estimated at US$6,000 million.· Also under discussion were the former Soviet Union's foreign debt commitments.· Environmentalists remain strongly opposed to such projects which encourage developing countries to sell their natural resources in order to pay their foreign debt.· Foreign-exchange reserves have been maintained at their current low level only by failing to pay back some foreign debt.· The first priority is the servicing of foreign debts and other foreign contracts.
· Investors are particularly concerned such a high percentage of profits came from foreign exchange movements.· Government figures indicated that total foreign exchange reserves stood at only US$14,750,000.· After his retirement, he chaired the committee on currency and foreign exchanges and served on the cabinet committee on indemnity.· Churchill's Cold War speech; and foreign exchange.· The foreign exchange crisis has robbed the country of regular fuel supplies.· As with sovereign governments many of these state enterprises will not directly earn foreign exchange.· This is one reason why the Yugoslav government has tried to avoid raising the price of foreign exchange.
· And 27 foreign firms have representative offices in Seoul.· Meanwhile many public assets were sold off cheaply, often to foreign firms.· He did say that 30 bids were being reviewed, all from foreign firms or Western-backed joint ventures.· Will foreign firms get a piece of the action?· In the first place, governments all over the world offer fiscal incentives to attract foreign firms to open factories.· Greenpeace's six month investigation revealed 64 plans for waste dumping operations involving 62 foreign firms in 13 countries.
· The Foreign Compensation Commission was empowered by statute to deal with claims to compensation under agreements with foreign governments.· Most of the mine-clearing programs are financed by foreign governments or the United Nations.· But foreign governments have been slow to respond with aid.· Alarmed by the case, foreign governments are talking of retaliation.· Collecting such evidence would necessitate the co-operation of foreign governments.
· On Dec. 4 the National Assembly unanimously adopted a foreign investment bill, allowing for a liberal regime.· He also dealt with economic issues and foreign investment.· Total direct foreign investment grew to $ 2 billion in 1995 from about $ 1 billion in 1994.· The government likes to quote a figure of $ 3 billion for the foreign investment it has attracted.· A junta official said recently that a dialogue is unnecessary as evidenced by improving foreign investments and relations.· The framework for involvement of foreign investment and technology is now under study.
· Will foreign investors be put off and jobs be lost if we stay out?· In many countries this still gives the foreign investor a position of significance.· For foreign investors the question is how the game would unfold.· There were to be tax incentives for foreign investors.· More likely, foreign investors will eventually push the dollar down sharply.· There is a deep recession, and foreign investors are reluctant to commit themselves in the present unstable situation.
· However, he may receive some additional benefits which recognise the fact that he is working in a foreign land.· In a foreign land, one sees everything from an angle.· We all had an extra cup of coffee to celebrate meeting in a foreign land.· Serving a company in a foreign land, for example, is no longer either a privilege or a hardship.· Metaphor is no mere tourist in a foreign land, it is a bootlegger.· If it is not straw, it is imported coal from foreign lands.· These days Valdez is taking political science classes at Pima Community College and planning to study in a foreign land.
· The rest deals with foreign languages and other skills useful to people in their jobs.· Thousands, branded parasitical intellectuals merely because they spoke a foreign language or wore spectacles, were systematically liquidated.· Couldn't understand it, though, it was in a foreign language.· He wrote thirty-four mathematics texts, several of them translated into foreign languages, mostly based on his Exeter teaching.· Noticeable commitment to training in general and to foreign language training in particular. 2.· As I travel about the world, I keep promising to learn at least one foreign language.· Both these forms of support suggest that video is a good medium for extended listening to the foreign language.· One also will get surprises by learning a foreign language.
· My foreign lawyer registration number is ....· There are signs that legislation may be passed in 2001 or 2002 to introduce a regime for foreign lawyers.
· Too many companies enter foreign markets without analysing sufficiently either the customers or the competition in those markets.· Most foreign markets are cheaper now than ours.· These problems rank well ahead of other difficulties such as handling export paperwork, obtaining market information and ascertaining product suitability in foreign markets.· But now notice that what happens in the foreign market is a mirror image of what happens in the domestic market.· In either case a company's growth objectives may make foreign markets very attractive.· Industries find their foreign markets slowly shrinking rather than finding themselves plunging off an economic cliff.· Never mind the home market, what about the foreign market?
· Yeltsin picked Yevgeny Primakov, a spy chief, for foreign minister.· At subsequent meetings Britain attempted to divert the discussions towards its favoured position of a permanent committee of foreign ministers.
· The fostering of trade was preoccupying foreign ministries as never before.· During that period, officials said, all foreign ministry news conferences will be suspended.· In addition, the opposition demanded the foreign ministry and five other cabinet posts.· But should the foreign ministry continue to be in charge of international trade matters?· Occasionally young men with diplomatic ambitions were allowed, if strongly enough recommended, to study in the foreign ministry archives.· The country's foreign ministry issued a communique on its Sovereignty Reaffirmation Day.· Nevertheless, it was the nearest approach to a foreign ministry which the country had as yet possessed.
· It is irrelevant that the partners are foreign nationals and resident at the time of service outside the jurisdiction.· For many years now, more than half the engineering doctorates awarded in the United States have gone to foreign nationals.· If you go over that line and are a foreign national, you get arrested.· George told Pat of a number of foreign nationals who are imprisoned at present for being found witnessing as Christians.
· And Douglas will retire soon, I think, so we can have new blood at the foreign office.· In the mid-1820s the total number of despatches sent and received each year by the foreign office was about 12,000.· By the early seventeenth century, therefore, foreign offices, in so far as they existed, were still for the most part embryonic.· By the beginning of the twentieth century the attitudes and ambience of many foreign offices were altering quite rapidly.· Suggestions of this kind culminated in the creation of the foreign office which began its life in 1782.· Clearly the need for works of this kind was now being felt in foreign offices.· From 1865, however, the foreign office had for the first time a department concerned entirely with commercial affairs.· The development of organised diplomatic archives and of foreign office libraries is perhaps best seen in Britain.
· In foreign policy they broke off the alliance with Sparta and made alliances with Argos and Thessaly, which had been pro-Persian.· The key question is how flexibility will be applied in sensitive areas such as foreign policy.· Some Republicans believe Dole can draw a clear enough distinction with Clinton to make foreign policy a telling issue in the campaign.· A third main cause of contention between the two parties was foreign policy.· Powell opposed the first foreign policy act of the new president.· The speech sent a strong signal confirming foreign policy is far down on his list of priorities.· Indeed, Clinton spent the first half of his presidency finding his foreign policy legs.
· That is enough for now, thinks Britain's foreign secretary, Douglas Hurd.· As David Carlton stresses, Eden was not the most unequivocal foreign secretary.· During his two-week visit to Britain he is due to meet the foreign secretary, Douglas Hurd.· It was Gerald Kaufman, shadow foreign secretary, who did that for him, in a speech of vast sweeping grasp.· Herbert Morrison, the foreign secretary, was among the more belligerent.· Some ministers, including Sir Geoffrey Howe, the foreign secretary, are simply not interested in environmental issues.· Such thinking was influential in the Foreign Office until at least 1948, and was strongly encouraged by Ernest Bevin as foreign secretary.· In 1825 he married Harriet, the gifted daughter of George Canning, foreign secretary and later prime minister.
· The most important areas were agriculture, energy, environmental pollution, competition regulations, and foreign trade.· This involves significant benefits with regard to financial and foreign trade operations, as well as financing.· If you are involved in foreign trade, you can benefit from a foreign currency overdraft or loan.· From the standpoint of the partial equilibrium analysis of the employment impact, the role of foreign trade emerged as especially important.· These deflationary policies of various governments added to unemployment at a time when Britain's foreign trade was depressed.· As late as the 1920s, apart from figures on population and foreign trade, official statistical data barely existed.
· The island is beginning to see an increase in foreign visitors, but as yet very little development has taken place.· We all knew we had foreign visitors among us.· Many foreign visitors, intrigued by her story, used to visit Maria Clementina.· The result is evident in the back streets and courtyards, which Atalla judiciously avoids with a foreign visitor.· I wanted to ensure that foreign visitors who came to this country were also covered by insurance.· According to state statistics, Massachusetts had nearly 27 million domestic visitors in 1994, against 1 million foreign visitors.· An attractive house, used by the State to entertain foreign visitors.· A foreign visitor to Oxford is shown the colleges, libraries, playing fields, laboratories, and administrative offices.
· The case has highlighted the risks of exploitation faced by foreign workers.· Apply slightly tougher standards for employers who hire temporary foreign workers for specialty jobs in the high-tech industry and elsewhere.· Attention focuses on the role of foreign workers in the emerging oil industry.· No one knows how many foreign workers will be affected.· Tandem says it is not responsible for the foreign workers it gets through contracts with companies such as Wipro.
PHRASES FROM THE ENTRYPHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES► If I should die, think only this of me:/That there’s some corner of a foreign field/That is forever England
1from or relating to a country that is not your own: - I knew the tune, but the words were foreign to me.
- Andrew's reserved, night-club hesitation was foreign to the music, and quite foreign to Nicandra.
- Law firm were law firms, and areas such as marketing and finance were foreign to them.
- Nothing in dance is foreign to human experience.
- Starving people have frequently refused to eat food that is foreign to them, and horses will behave in the same way.
- That is foreign to our culture.
- What was being done was foreign to our other 10 players and it took them a while.
- Make sure you remove all foreign matter from the wound.
- A group of prisoners was carefully picking foreign bodies from a mound of rice before cooking.
- Even for the last remaining superpower, domestic issues, not foreign matters, dominate national elections.
- Eyes inflamed from trauma or after foreign bodies have been removed.
- Lombardy was stopped and arrested on suspicion of rape by force; rape with a foreign object and false imprisonment.
- Nothing but the thrill of seeing your name in print, alongside your gut-wrenching tale of finding foreign objects in your food.
- Tell everyone to watch out for a foreign body?
- The resulting pellets are termed Type 90 reflecting the high percentage of hop material present compared to water and foreign matters.
- We describe two cases of accidental aspiration of a foreign body after use of a metered dose inhaler.
- He was not a man to show public affection on foreign soil.
- Will your grandchildren forgive us, Erich, if we surrender our armies on foreign soil without a fight?
foreign students Can you speak any foreign languages? the success of foreign companies in various industries I thought she sounded foreign. transactions in foreign currencies2[only before noun] involving or dealing with other countries OPP domestic: America’s foreign policyforeign investment/trade etc Foreign competition provides consumers with a greater variety of goods. our budget for foreign aid (=financial help to countries in need) the Chinese Foreign Minister3be foreign to somebody formal a)to seem strange to someone as the result of not being known or understood SYN be alien to somebody: The language of finance is quite foreign to me. b)to be not typical of someone’s usual character: Aggression is completely foreign to his nature.4foreign body/matter/object formal a piece of dirt, glass, or other material that has got inside something, especially someone’s body, and that should not be there: cells that are designed to attack and destroy foreign bodies—foreignness noun [uncountable]