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• foreign service
  foreign service

  noun

  a division of the U.S. Department of State or of a foreign office that maintains diplomatic and consular posts and personnel in other countries.
• Foreign Service
  Foreign Service

  The professional arm of the executive branch that supplies diplomats for the United States embassies and consulates around the world. Ambassadors, though officially members of the Foreign Service, are sometimes friends of the president of the United States appointed in gratitude for support given during elections.

foreign service

American  

noun

(often initial capital letters)

1. a division of the U.S. Department of State or of a foreign office that maintains diplomatic and consular posts and personnel in other countries.

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foreign service British  

noun

1. the diplomatic and usually consular personnel of a foreign affairs ministry or foreign office collectively who represent their country abroad, deal with foreign diplomats at home, etc

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Foreign Service Cultural  

1. The professional arm of the executive branch that supplies diplomats for the United States embassies and consulates around the world. Ambassadors, though officially members of the Foreign Service, are sometimes friends of the president of the United States appointed in gratitude for support given during elections.

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Etymology

Origin of foreign service

First recorded in 1925–30

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

foreign service Foreign Service

Cynthia Iglesias Guven worked at the Agriculture Department since 1998, living around the world as a foreign service officer and eventually taking a senior job in Washington.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 4, 2025

And then they tell the career civil servants and foreign service officers and military people, “This is what we want to get at the negotiating table. How do we do that?”

From Salon ● Aug. 12, 2025

"I see foreign service officers that have spent their entire lives serving - a large part of it overseas - and the sacrifices they made," they said.

From BBC ● Feb. 5, 2025

Instead, he filed it on the “dissent channel,” a forum that embassies created during the Vietnam War that let any foreign service officer express his personal view to higher-ups.

From Slate ● Dec. 23, 2024

Here he is in a regiment which in a year or so will go on foreign service; he is mad enough to intend to go with it, and where is he then?

From A Search For A Secret (Vol 1 of 3) A Novel by Henty, G. A. (George Alfred)

Gracias attended the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service before getting a law degree from the University of Chicago.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 11, 2026

And amid a federal hiring freeze, tests for the Foreign Service — men and women who staff U.S. embassies and consulates around the world, often for their entire professional lives — were put on hold.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 29, 2025

The goal of those fellowships has been to help students from underrepresented groups get a chance at entering the Foreign Service soon after graduation.

From Salon ● Apr. 23, 2025

If confirmed, Stefanik would replace UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a career diplomat who worked for the US Foreign Service for 35 years.

From BBC ● Nov. 11, 2024

Nine months later, back home, I took the Foreign Service exam and, a year after that, started working for the State Department.

From "Middlesex: A Novel" by Jeffrey Eugenides