foreigner
Pluralforeigners
- 1A person who belongs to or comes from a country other than one's own.
As a foreigner, she found the local customs both fascinating and a little confusing.
The festival drew thousands of foreigners eager to experience the regional tradition.
Similaroutsider, alien, stranger, visitor, expatriate
Oppositenative, local, citizen
Note
An old word with a newer ending. Middle English first used forein, the adjective itself, as a noun, then lengthened it to forner and foreyner, perhaps on the model of straunger. The longer word displaced native Old English elþēodiġ. It fits the plainest legal prose, as in Earl Granville's 1852 statement of foreigners' rights in Britain, and speakers readily apply it to themselves: "a foreigner like myself."
- 2A private job carried out by an employee using a trade factory's facilities, rather than through the official business.
The machinist took on a foreigner over the weekend, welding a gate for a friend.
Several of the men supplemented their wages with foreigners done quietly after hours.
Similarhomer
Note
Here the word built from foreign + -er points not at a country but at the firm: the job is foreign to the business, done with its tools and premises yet outside its accounts. It shares its spelling and its plural, foreigners, with the everyday "person from abroad", so context carries the meaning. A foreigner done after hours is something made, not someone met.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English forner (also foreyner, forenere), an expanded form of the earlier forein ('foreigner'), taken from the adjective and equivalent to 'foreign' plus '-er'. The '-er' ending may be by analogy with Middle English straunger ('stranger'), and the word displaced the native Old English elþēodiġ.