xenism

English

Etymology

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

Noun

xenism (plural xenisms) (linguistics)

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

   Hyponym: exotism

   Coordinate term: borrowing

   • 2013, Mari Jones, Ishtla Singh, Exploring Language Change, Taylor & Francis, published 2005, →ISBN, page 34:

     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.

   • 2020 November 30, Sergio Baldi, Dictionary of Arabic Loanwords in the Languages of Central and East Africa (Handbuch der Orientalistik; Erste Abteilung: Der Nahe und der Mittlere Osten; 145), Leiden • Boston: Brill, →ISBN, page 5:

     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).

Anagrams

• minxes, mixens

Romanian

Etymology

Borrowed from French xénisme.

Noun

xenism n (plural xenisme)

1. xenism, foreignism

Declension

	singular			plural
	indefinite	definite		indefinite	definite
nominative-accusative	xenism	xenismul		xenisme	xenismele
genitive-dative	xenism	xenismului		xenisme	xenismelor
vocative	xenismule			xenismelor