Dutch

How to spell dutch

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce dutch

What does dutch mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the Netherlands, its people, or its language.
2. adjectiveDescribing an arrangement in which each person pays their own share of the cost.

Dutch in a sentence

• The museum holds a famous collection of dutch paintings from the seventeenth century.

• The colleagues agreed to go dutch on the restaurant bill after the meeting.

• She spent a year studying the dutch language before moving to Amsterdam.

• On a first date they decided to keep things dutch and split the cost evenly.

Where does dutch come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word traces back to the Middle Dutch word duutsch and the Old High German diutisc, which both meant 'of the people' or 'popular'. The deeper root is the Proto-Germanic word theudo, meaning 'people' or 'nation', the same root that gives German its own name for itself, deutsch. In early English use the term was applied broadly to Germanic speakers across the Low Countries and Germany, only narrowing over the 1500s and 1600s to mean specifically the people and language of the Netherlands. The shift came partly through close trade and rivalry between England and the Netherlands, which also produced a string of dismissive idioms such as going dutch. The spelling preserves the soft Germanic sound, and the tch cluster is the main thing a writer has to remember.

How the word is built

• dutch (from Middle Dutch duutsch: of the people, related to German deutsch)