[f. as prec. + -ISM.]
1. The imitation of what is foreign.
1879. Sir G. G. Scott, Recollect., v. 202. In my essays on various subjects at the end of my book on Restoration (published in 1850) I do not recollect any tendency to foreignism.
1892. Review of Reviews, VI. Aug., 165/1. The journalists in the German language encourage foreignism.
An idiom, phrase, or term of foreign origin.
1878. H. Stevens, Bibles in Caxton Exhib., Intro., 38–9. That he [Miles Coverdale] left in this our first complete English Bibles some few foreignisms and some inverted English is not surprising when we find that the dozen corps of revisers since have not seen fit or been able to exclude them.
1887. L. Swinburne, The Bucolic Dialect of the Plains, in Scribner’s Mag., II. Oct., 509/1. It is astonishing, indeed, how many of these foreignisms have crept into the common speech of the Rocky Mountain States.
