foreign devil
1
9.9
- noun
- Slur
:
[insulto despectivo contra extranjeros]
- Old Lady wants to move that foreign devil out of the Wu compound.
Examples
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Chinese leaders and their minions claim that foreign devils are trying to contain China with a ring of alliances and military hookups.
Academic text (1997) -
Chou En-Lai remarked, "These foreign devils, you just can't trust them."
Blog text (19) -
Why should the diamond go to the foreign devils?
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There are many foreign-devil sailors looking for a good time, and bad men roaming the streets at night.
Fiction book (2000) -
There is a vision of the Orient that I have of slender women in cheongsams and kimonos who die for the love of unworthy foreign devils.
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He'd recoiled instinctively from the thought that the red-haired queen of the foreign devils was cleverer and wiser.
Fiction book (2000) -
Rumours, gossip, and news of recent events in China crowded into his head as he listened to Ah Fook's argument that the Qings in the Forbidden City were losing ground to the red-haired foreign devils.
Fiction book (2000) -
The villagers warned each other to stay away from the foreign devils who had arrived in their town.
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In the old stories, the foreign devils were said to bring misfortune and deceit wherever they went.
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Many believed that the foreign devils sought to undermine their traditional way of life.
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase straightforwardly combines 'foreign' (from another country) with 'devil' (an evil or wicked person), so a learner who knows both words would readily infer it is an insulting label for foreigners perceived as dangerous or morally bad. Although the term has specific historical and regional usage, its meaning is compositionally transparent from the constituents and follows an obvious derogatory compounding pattern.
Etymology
Foreign devil comes from how people in some East Asian places reacted when they first met strange Western visitors. One popular story says they saw odd clothes, guns and big ships and called them foreign for coming from outside and devil to show they seemed dangerous or evil, so the phrase became an insulting way to mean 'foreigner' today.