How to Use foreign service in a Sentence

foreign service

noun
  • Whites make up around 87% of the most senior ranks of the foreign service.
    — Nicole Gaouette, CNN, 12 Apr. 2021
  • That also shut the door to joining the foreign service.
    — Fatima Hussein, Chicago Tribune, 1 May 2026
  • There's a lot for future foreign service officers to learn in this book.
    — NBC News, 13 Mar. 2022
  • There are conflicting accounts about whether he was paid for his foreign service.
    — Nate Jones, Washington Post, 6 Feb. 2024
  • The foreign service itself, the diplomatic corps, has been stressed.
    — CBS News, 8 July 2020
  • The United States, with its foreign service in disarray, was caught off guard.
    — Robert F. Worth, New York Times, 26 Mar. 2018
  • The remaining slots go to foreign service officers in the diplomatic corps.
    — Hans Nichols, Axios, 16 July 2024
  • The number of people taking the foreign service exam has dropped noticeably.
    — Tom Benning, Dallas News, 27 Nov. 2020
  • The majority of those placed on leave were career civil servants and foreign service officers.
    — Sara Cook, CBS News, 28 Jan. 2025
  • Yet its foreign service has never been more demoralised; the Chinese one never more confident.
    — The Economist, 20 Apr. 2020
  • His staff rewrote key personnel rules to allow the department to fire foreign service and civil service officials in roles now being phased out.
    — Michele Kelemen, NPR, 11 July 2025
  • The welcome kit included toys, coloring books, puzzles, and games for the children of the foreign service officers.
    — Abraham Mahshie, Washington Examiner, 4 Feb. 2020
  • Sigg, who left Switzerland’s foreign service in 1998, has needed his diplomatic skills again.
    — New York Times, 5 May 2021
  • Andrew joined Malta’s foreign service, and worked in embassies in Berlin and New Delhi.
    — Ben Taub, The New Yorker, 14 Dec. 2020
  • Dinkelman noted that such a move is unprecedented in the 101-year history of the modern foreign service.
    — Max Rego, The Hill, 23 Dec. 2025
  • According to her father, Sabika Sheikh had hoped to one day join Pakistan's foreign service and become a diplomat.
    — Fox News, 23 May 2018
  • Bondarev went on to deliver a stinging critique of Russia’s foreign service and its chief diplomat, Sergey Lavrov.
    — Anton Troianovski, BostonGlobe.com, 23 May 2022
  • Her first foreign service post, in 2009, was a two-year stint in Mexico, followed by a posting to South Africa.
    — Los Angeles Times, 30 Aug. 2022
  • The second diplomatic staffer also at the table was Suriya Jayanti, a foreign service officer based in Kyiv.
    — Desmond Butler, Michael Biesecker, Matthew Lee, Anchorage Daily News, 14 Nov. 2019
  • Brink, a career foreign service officer, has served since 2019 as ambassador to Slovakia.
    — Matthew Lee, Anchorage Daily News, 25 Apr. 2022
  • Bárcena, 63, retired this month after 42 years in Mexico’s foreign service, the last two of which were the most unusual.
    — Washington Post, 21 Feb. 2021
  • In May, Blinken put on an academic gown to address a new generation of foreign service graduates at Georgetown.
    — David Montgomery, Washington Post, 22 Aug. 2022
  • Meanwhile China’s net spending on foreign services, mostly tourism, surged from $50 billion to more than $80 billion over the same period.
    — Nathaniel Taplin, WSJ, 4 Jan. 2019
  • One of my tutors – a Muslim man who had worked for the Sri Lankan foreign service in his youth – would sit with me over lessons and then linger to talk with me about politics, culture and the country.
    — Eranda Jayawickreme, The Conversation, 24 Mar. 2026
  • Langenkamp was, improbably, the third foreign service officer at the State Department to die while walking or biking in the Washington area this year.
    — Alicia Parlapiano, BostonGlobe.com, 27 Nov. 2022
  • Career diplomats, unlike political appointees made by the president, have risen through the foreign service ranks and often serve across multiple administrations.
    — Max Rego, The Hill, 23 Dec. 2025
  • In Season 1 of The Diplomat, Russell plays a seasoned foreign service officer more at home in a crisis zone than an upper-crust atmosphere.
    — Katie Campione, Deadline, 8 Aug. 2024
  • Last month the department announced changes to the foreign service test that included dropping a situational awareness portion and adding in a logic and reasoning section, Reuters reported at the time.
    — Shelby Talcott, semafor.com, 22 Oct. 2025
  • But Ukraine's foreign service said Russia's construction industry also faces the problems of low demand, limited state support, and the outflow of resources to the war against Ukraine.
    — Brendan Cole, MSNBC Newsweek, 16 Sep. 2025
  • Baek, a foreign service officer born in South Korea with work experience from China to the Dominican Republic, was introduced to the program through a friend.
    — Noah Lyons, San Diego Union-Tribune, 23 Sep. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'foreign service.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: