Dutch words

Since many of the Anglo-Saxons who settled in Britain came from the area now known as Holland or the Netherlands, it is not surprising that Old English vocabulary has many parallels in modern Dutch vocabulary. They are both Germanic languages, and in the past there was a continuum of dialects across Germanic-speaking areas. It was only in 1579, when the seven provinces that form the basis of the Netherlands gained independence and united, that Dutch, which is simply a form of Deutsch, the German word for ‘German’, became a distinct national language.

 Dutch has made significant contributions to English vocabulary, falling into four main groups: words connected with food and drink; with the army and navy; with art; and a group of lively words, often not quite standard vocabulary, that supplied missing ideas to English. Booze [ME], from Dutch busen ‘drink to excess’, is one of the oldest words borrowed from Dutch. Brandy [M17th], a shortening of earlier brandewine, is from Dutch brandewijn ‘burnt or distilled wine’, while gin [E18th] is a shortening of genever, the Dutch form of Old French genevre ‘juniper’ used to flavour the drink. Advocaat [M20th] is a direct use of the Dutch for ‘advocate, lawyer’, a shortening of advocatenborrel ‘lawyer’s drink’, the borrel being Dutch for a small alcoholic drink sipped slowly at a social gathering. Foods from Dutch include coleslaw[L8th] from koolsla ‘cabbage salad’; cookie [E18th] from keokje ‘little cake’; and gherkin [E17th] from (au)gurkje ‘little cucumber’, a word that goes back ultimately to the medieval Greek for cucumber, angourion.

 For centuries the English fought both for and against the Dutch. An uproar [E16th] was originally an uprising, from uproer, but because of the similarity of the sound to ‘roar’ became a noise. Similarly, a forlorn hope [M16th] from verloren hoop was changed from its original sense of ‘a lost troop’ referring to soldiers leading an attack and likely to die. Furlough [E17th] is from Dutch verlof, the second element related to English ‘leave’, and was originally a military term. At sea, where Holland was a major power in the 17th century, the Dutch gave us avast [E17th] from houd vast ‘hold fast’; the corvette [M17th] (via French); the sloop [E17th]; the smack [E17th]; a cruise [M17th] from kruisen ‘to cross’; and the yacht [M16th], its spelling reflecting the original jaghtschip, literally ‘hunting ship’, a term used to mean ‘fast pirate ship’. A sailor’s pea jacket [E18th] is also Dutch from pijakker formed from pij ‘coat of coarse cloth’ and the word for jacket, while the Dutch swabber, a sailor set to swabbing decks, was adopted into English and then shortened to swab [M17th].

 In art easel [L16th] comes from ezel ‘donkey’, which carries the load of the painting, and etch [M17th] comes from etsen, from a Germanic root meaning ‘cause to eat’; as well as landscape [L16th] from landschap.

 As for that group of lively words, it includes boss [E19th] from baas ‘master’; bumpkin [L16th] either from boomken ‘little tree’ or boomekijn ‘little barrel’; frolic [E16th] from vrolijk ‘merry, cheerful’; frump [M16th], a mixture of Middle English frumple ‘wrinkle’ and Dutch verrompelen, and which travelled via ‘mocking speech’ and ‘bad temper’ to its modern sense; gruff [LME] from grof ‘coarse, rude’; scrape, where an Old English original was reinforced by schrapen ‘to scratch’; slobber [LME] from slobberen ‘to walk through mud’; snoop [M19th] originally meaning ‘to eat on the sly’ in both languages; and split [L16th] from splitten, originally used of a ship to break on rocks. Finally, Dutch also gave us catkin [L16th] from catteken ‘kitten’; iceberg [L18th] from ijsberg ‘ice hill’; and walrus [E18th], which the Dutch had already borrowed and inverted from Old Norse hrosshvair ‘horse whale’.

 See also base, bat, bluff, blunder, boor, borough, boulevard, bow, boy, bully, butt, cork, crap, crockery, croon, dear, decoy, dock, dole, droll, drum, dust, dyke, filibuster, flout, forlorn, fraught, fuzz, gannet, geek, glib, golf, groove, hag, hump, hunky-dory, husky, interloper, kink, kit, knickers, lead, live; mail, manikin, measles, mite, nag, norman, orange, pack, pamper, pip, pit, plaque, poppycock, quack, rabbit, roast, scab, scamp, school, scone, sledge, slim, slip, smack, snack, snug, spick, spike, spoke, swirl, tattoo, tram, trice, trip, truffle, utter, waffle, wagon, whip.