Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

xenism

Word Rarity Very rare

Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English

Syllables: xenism
IPA

15

Scrabble Score

6

Letters

1

Syllables

6

Unique Chars

Meaning

noun

A word used in utterances of a language but generally marked as foreign.

Example Sentences

"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 went for a sail in a gulet, where gulet is the word for a type of Turkish sail boat, which has no real equivalent in English."
"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)."

Etymology

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

Origin

Source language: French

Word Breakdown

Root: xénisme, ξενισμός

Inflected Forms

xenisms (plural)

Frequently Paired Words

borrowing

Questions

What does xenism mean?: A word used in utterances of a language but generally marked as foreign.
Where does xenism come from?: It is traced to French.

How to pronounce xenism

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