Meanings
plural foreign devils
- ChinaarchaicderogatoryA foreigner.
"Alas! I called him 'foreign devil' then. Chang, too, had much to learn." "He is speaking of Lord Macartney."
1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “(please specify the chapter number)”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, published April 20191 more example
Some liberals interested in reforming the law put out a questionnaire to poll public opinion on homosexuality. They got about two thousand people to answer the questionnaire but there were in the end only about five hundred responses. As usual most of these respondants were English, Europeans or Americans which gave a very skewed idea to the Chinese community who again viewed that only the "foreign devils" were interested in homosexuality and law reform.
1982 December 18, Siong-huat Chua, Sam Sasha, Philip Fung, “Hong Kong And The Emergence Of An Asian Gay Consciousness”, in Gay Community News, volume 10, number 22, page 8
Origin
- Cantonese番鬼
- Englishforeign devil
Calque of Cantonese 番鬼 (faan1 gwai2, literally “foreign devil”)
More words from Cantonese
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
foreign devil. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/foreign%20devil
“foreign devil.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/foreign%20devil. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “foreign devil,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/foreign%20devil.
Source: foreign devil on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.