Words from Dutch
16 words in Curio passed through Dutch on their way into English.
About Dutch
Low Franconian, West Germanic branch of the Indo-European family · spoken today
Where
The Netherlands and Flanders → Suriname, the Dutch Caribbean, and once the Dutch East Indies and South Africa
When
Dates unknown
Speakers
23.1M
as of 2019
Native speakers, Wikidata figure for 2019
Family path
- Dutch
- GermanLow GermanScotsMiddle EnglishHindi
- English
Where it came from
Dutch is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European family, descended from the Low Franconian group. It is often described as roughly in between German and English, and it shares features with both. Its vocabulary is mostly Germanic, with slightly more Romance loans than German but far fewer than English.
Source: Wikipedia
The words, A to Z
- blockade
A word built to sound official the moment it landed in English.
- coffee
A word that traveled from Arabia to your kitchen counter by way of four different languages, picking up a new coat of spelling in each one.
- coleslaw
This crunchy side dish carries a name that's just cabbage and salad stacked together.
- culvert
This word for a drain tunnel under a road has a history that's as buried as the pipes themselves.
- glib
A word for smooth, easy talk that may itself trace back to something slick underfoot.
- gnu
This shaggy African antelope may owe its name to the sound it makes.
- iceberg
English didn't invent this word so much as borrow half of it and translate the other half.
- landscape
A word that once meant nothing more than a stretch of land found its true calling once painters picked up a brush.
- monsoon
A wind pattern named not for water, but for time itself.
- muff
The cozy tube you slide both hands into on a cold day probably crossed the sea from a Dutch mitten.
- mug
A humble drinking vessel whose name has been sloshing around northern Europe for five centuries with no clear source.
- racket
The word for a tennis paddle and the word for a loud commotion may be two completely different words wearing the same spelling.
- sago
This starchy staple carried its own name across oceans before it ever reached an English table.
- sleigh
The word for a winter ride glides straight out of the same root as 'slide.'
- smuggle
There's a reason this word for sneaking goods feels like it's slipping past you as you say it.
- tattoo
This word actually hides three unrelated stories under one skin.