How to spell foreign

hear itfor·eign/'fɔrɪn/adjectiveSilent and tricky

What it means: Coming from or belonging to another country.

In a sentence: My uncle brought me a foreign coin from his trip.

The part people get wrong

Watch for a silent g, and an unstressed vowel that is hard to hear, and the order of ei. Often misspelled as foriegn or forign.

Same family: foreigner, foreigners, foreignness, foreign-language, foreign-policy. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: “Foreign” comes from a Latin word meaning “outside” or “out of doors” (foris). Over time, it came to mean something that comes from outside your own country or group.

Patterns it uses: The unstressed vowel (schwa) · Silent letters

Try spelling it

You will hear the word and a sentence. Type it and press Enter. Then four more words from the same level, so you know where you stand.

Words like this

gnaw · sovereign · toward · borough · align · assign · cologne · sign

Spelling.School is a spaced-repetition spelling practice: ten minutes a day, every word spoken aloud, every miss explained, and every word coming back just before you would forget it. Try five words without signing up.