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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

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

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

From BBC • Jan. 14, 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

They call him English Tommy because, when his Militia regiment was ordered to Aldershot, he said he was ‘the first of his ancestors that was ever sent on foreign service.’

From Humours of Irish Life by Various