dutch
Noun pluraldutches
Pluraldutches
- 1Relating to the Netherlands, its people, or the Dutch language.
The Dutch government announced new flood defenses along the coast.
The Dutch team won the speed skating relay by half a lap.
- 2The people of the Netherlands, or any of certain ethnic groups descended from Netherlanders.
The Dutch have spent centuries holding back the sea with dikes and pumps.
Many of the Dutch who settled the Hudson Valley kept their own churches for generations.
SimilarNetherlanders
Note
The noun is always plural and usually comes with the: the Dutch are, the Dutch will vote next month. It cannot name one person; for that English says a Dutch person, a Dutchman or a Dutchwoman. The same plural stretches to communities descended from Netherlanders, such as the Dutch of upstate New York, and the setting shows which group is meant.
- 3The main language of the Netherlands, of Flanders in northern Belgium, and of Suriname.
The menu in the Brussels café was printed in both Dutch and French.
Several of his novels have been translated from Dutch into English.
- 4The Pennsylvania Dutch people, considered together as a community.
Among the Dutch of Lancaster County, the old dialect is still spoken at home.
The cookbook gathers recipes from the Dutch of southeastern Pennsylvania.
Note
Pennsylvania Dutch shortens to the Dutch only where Pennsylvania is already the setting, as in a local history or a regional cookbook. Anywhere else the plain plural will be read as the people of the Netherlands, so give the full name the first time and the short form after.
- 5To treat cocoa beans or cocoa powder with an alkali solution, which darkens the color and makes the flavor less bitter.
Manufacturers Dutch the cocoa to give it a darker color and a smoother flavor.
Recipes that rely on baking soda often call for natural cocoa rather than cocoa that has been Dutched.
Similaralkalize
Note
Bakers meet the verb mostly in its participles, Dutched cocoa or Dutch-processed cocoa, and the treatment itself is Dutching, usually with a capital D. Beyond color and taste, the alkali leaves the powder neutral rather than acidic, which is why a recipe leavened with baking soda may ask for natural cocoa instead.
- 6A wife.
We've been married forty years, me and my old dutch.
He met his dutch at a dance, and they were married within the year.
Note
The word is duchess cut short, so it owes nothing to the Netherlands or its people and keeps a small d. Read it as a fond, joking title for a wife, the duchess of the household, rather than as any comment on where she comes from; it is slang, and it suits talk between friends rather than writing.
- 7Relating to Afrikaners and their culture, used as an ethnic slur.
Note
The slur trades on the Cape Dutch roots of Afrikaner culture, so a word that is neutral about the Netherlands becomes an insult in South Africa. It belongs only in quoting or discussing the insult; the neutral adjective is Afrikaner, as in Afrikaner music or Afrikaner farmers.
- 8An offensive name for Afrikaners as a people, used as an ethnic slur.
Note
As a noun it is the same slur as the adjective for Afrikaner culture, in the plural form that elsewhere names the people of the Netherlands: the Dutch. Only the South African setting and the speaker's tone show the insult, so read it with care, and say Afrikaners when the people are meant.
- 9Relating to the Germanic-speaking peoples of continental Europe, chiefly the Germans, especially established German-speaking communities in parts of the US, or the Dutch.
Her great-grandparents were Dutch settlers from the Rhineland who farmed in Ohio.
The county's Dutch families kept their German Bibles and hymnals for generations.
Note
This wider use survives as a fossil in American community names, above all the Pennsylvania Dutch, whose roots are German-speaking rather than Netherlandic. Outside such fixed names, a modern reader takes Dutch to mean the Netherlands, so new writing says German when it means German and keeps the old sense for history and the names it left behind.
- 10German, the main language of the Holy Roman Empire, in lands such as Germany, Austria, Alsace, and Luxembourg.
The traveler had enough Dutch to bargain in the markets of Cologne and Mainz.
The pastor preached in Dutch to the German-speaking farmers of the valley.
Note
Older English named the language of the German lands Dutch, the same widening seen in the old adjective for Germanic peoples. A grammar, a sermon or a letter described as Dutch in an old text may therefore be German. Today German names that language, and Dutch on its own means the language of the Netherlands.
- 11Careful with money and unwilling to waste it.
She was too Dutch to pay for a taxi when the bus cost half as much.
Their Dutch habits, patched coats and saved leftovers, let them retire early.
Oppositeextravagant, wasteful
Note
The adjective rests on an old national stereotype of careful spending, and like most such words it has dated. Said today, too Dutch to pay for a taxi can land as a dig at the Dutch rather than a compliment to the saver; thrifty or frugal carries the meaning without that edge.
- 12Serving as an inferior substitute for the real thing.
Note
The sense is long dead on its own and survives only as a fossil inside a few old set phrases, where Dutch marks something as a poor stand-in for the real thing. It is derogatory toward the Dutch, so recognize it when you meet it, but say substitute or ersatz in new sentences.
- 13A male given name, used more often as a nickname for someone of Dutch or German descent than as a formal first name.
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Origins
From Middle English Duch ("German, Low German, Dutch"), from Middle Low German dütsch and Middle Dutch dūtsch, from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz ("of one's people"), from *þeudō ("people"); it is a doublet of Deutsch, and related to modern German deutsch and Dutch Duits, both meaning "German". The unflattering senses, as in Dutch courage and Dutch uncle, are said to come from the rivalry of the Anglo-Dutch Wars.
A shortening of duchess.