dutch

Word family

• Dutchman
  nounB1
• Dutchwoman
  nounB1
• Netherlands
  nounA2

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/2

'The Dutch' is by far the most common way to refer to the people of the Netherlands as a group — it works in any context, from casual conversation to news reports. 'Dutch people' is a slightly more transparent alternative that many learners find helpful when they are not yet comfortable with the zero-article plural noun pattern. 'Netherlanders' is a formal, low-frequency label used mainly in official documents or historical writing; it can sound artificial in everyday speech. 'Hollanders' is informal and technically imprecise, because it refers only to people from the provinces North and South Holland, not the whole country. Most Dutch citizens prefer 'the Dutch' — use that unless your context requires a formal register.

Common collocations

Etymology

The word 'Dutch' comes from Middle English 'Duch,' which originally meant 'German' or 'of the Germanic peoples.' It goes back through Old High German 'diutisc' (meaning 'of the people' or 'popular,' referring to the everyday Germanic speech as opposed to Latin). During the 1500s–1600s, English speakers gradually narrowed the meaning from all Germanic peoples to specifically the people of the Netherlands, partly because the Dutch Republic was the German-speaking region England had the most contact with. The older, broader sense survives in the Pennsylvania Dutch (who are actually of German descent) and in a few fossilised expressions.