xenism
Not valid in Scrabble
It's a recognised English word, but it isn't in the official NASPA Scrabble word list.
- Scrabble points
- 15
- Words With Friends
- 17
- Letters
- 6
Definition of xenism
1 sense · 1 part of speech · etymology included
noun
-
A word used in utterances of a language but generally marked as foreign.
“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).”
Definitions from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA.
Etymology
Borrowed from French xénisme, from Ancient Greek ξενισμός (xenismós, “strangeness, novelty”).
Words you can make from xenism
41 playable · top: MINXES (15 pts)
Best play minxes 15 points5-letter words
4 words4-letter words
8 words3-letter words
17 words2-letter words
11 wordsFind your best play with xenism
See every word you can make from a set of letters that includes xenism, or browse word lists you can mine for high-scoring plays.