Xenism

Quick meaning: Xenism is a noun meaning A word used in utterances of a language but generally marked as foreign.

Meaning

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

Example Sentences

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).

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.

Word Forms

• xenisms

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include xenophone, xenolalia, glossolalia, pseudo-anglicism, exophora, allogenism.

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