Meaning & use
foreign country
Last updated
Meanings
nouncountable
A nation other than the one you come from or live in.
Grammar: Judged from the speaker's own homeland: to a Canadian, Spain is a foreign country.
Patterns
- travel to a foreign country
- live in a foreign country
She studied in a foreign country for a year.
Living in a foreign country taught him patience.
Visiting a foreign country can be a shock at first.
nouncountablefigurative
Any unfamiliar place or situation where customs feel strange to you.
Grammar: Used figuratively with an or like.
Patterns
- feel like a foreign country
The big city felt like a foreign country to the farm boy.
Retirement was a foreign country to her.
Old photos show a foreign country called the past.
Word forms
| plural | foreign countries |
|---|
Common combinations
- visit a foreign country
- We want to visit a foreign country this summer.
- live in a foreign country
- He lives in a foreign country now.
- in a foreign country
- It is hard to be ill in a foreign country.
- travel to foreign countries
- She loves traveling to foreign countries.
- foreign country's laws
- Follow the foreign country's laws.
Synonyms and how they differ
- overseas
- Overseas implies across the sea, while foreign country does not.
- abroad
- Abroad is an adverb for being in another country, whereas foreign country is a noun phrase.
- alien land
- Alien land is literary and suggests strangeness more than a simple different nation.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: foreign country or overseas?
foreign country vs overseas
Overseas means across the sea; a foreign country may be reached by land.
Practice
Which sentence uses foreign country correctly?
Choose one answer.
A foreign country is another nation, so moving to one makes sense. The others mix up home and foreign.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “foreign country”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.