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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

After graduation, he opted for Wall Street rather than the foreign service, journalism, or computer science.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 24, 2026

Still, when their husbands die, ostensibly in a plane crash, Bea and Twila are grief-stricken — they have lost not only their husbands but their careers as foreign service wives.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 15, 2026

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

For the past three years, he says, India has maintained contact with the Taliban through a foreign service diplomat.

From BBC ● Jan. 14, 2025

He offered to send me from Cambridge to an academy in Germany, to fit me for foreign service: Well judging that a cannon ball was a fair and quick provision for a poor relation.

From The Heiress; a comedy, in five acts by John Burgoyne

A director at a union for Foreign Service employees, she called the pool drama “a fun distraction from the more serious things” going on at her work.

From Slate ● Jun. 19, 2026

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

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