Flemish

How to spell flemish

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce flemish

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does flemish mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to Flanders, its people, culture, or the form of Dutch spoken there.
2. nounThe variety of Dutch spoken in the northern part of Belgium.

Flemish in a sentence

• adjective

  The gallery devoted a whole room to flemish paintings from the seventeenth century.

• noun

  Most people in Antwerp speak flemish at home and switch to French for work.

• adjective

  Flemish cuisine is famous for hearty beef stews cooked in dark beer.

• noun

  The official notices were printed in both flemish and French for the bilingual region.

Where does flemish come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

The word comes from the Middle Dutch and Middle Low German 'Vlamisch', an adjective meaning 'of Flanders', the low-lying coastal region that today spans parts of Belgium, the Netherlands, and France. It was built on the same root that gave 'Vlaming', a Fleming, that is, a person from Flanders, whose own origin is debated but is often linked to a word meaning 'flooded land' or 'wanderer'. English picked the term up in the 1400s through trade with the wealthy cloth-weaving towns of the Low Countries, with which medieval England did enormous business in wool. Although the place is called Flanders with an 'a', the people and their language settled into English as Flemish with an 'e', and that mismatch between the 'a' of the region and the 'e' of the adjective is exactly the spelling trap to watch. The single 'm' is also worth fixing in memory, since the doubled-consonant instinct tempts many writers toward 'Flemmish'.

How the word is built

• Flem- (from Fleming, an inhabitant of Flanders)
• -ish (adjective/language suffix meaning 'relating to')