Other forms: internationals
International means it involves more than one country. An international flight, an international phone call, an international team where nobody shares a first language.
It also means known or working beyond one country: an international star, a company that has gone international. In sport it is a noun as well — an international is a match between two national teams, and a player picked for their country is called one too. You meet the word all over the airport and the news: International Departures, international law, the International Space Station. Keep it apart from global and worldwide, which mean everywhere at once; international needs countries dealing with each other. In travel its opposite is domestic, the flights that stay inside the country.
1adjectiveinternationalInvolving two or more countries.~96%
“The airport handles more international flights than domestic ones.”
2adjectiveknownKnown or active in many countries.~2%
“The band had an international following before its first album.”
3nounsportsA sports match between two countries, or a player who has played for their country.~2%
“He won thirty caps and retired as an international.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 11 sentences found in the wild and placed 11 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
International has a birthday. Jeremy Bentham built it from inter-, between, and national, and put it into print in 1780 in his An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. It is one of the few everyday English words whose inventor we can name.
Proto-Indo-European
*ters-
Vulgar Latin
*interrāre — to put in earth
Old French
enterrer
Middle English
enteren
English
inter
English, today
international
From inter- + national. From inter- + national. Introduced in modern English by Jeremy Bentham in his An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, 1780. inter comes from Middle English enteren, borrowed from Old French enterrer, enterer, from Vulgar Latin interrāre (“to put in earth”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA