Moving to Holland
Out of context: Reply #182
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All Things Dutch
Why do they refer to a suicide as "the Dutch act"? And wondering about the phrase "Dutch uncle."
What we have here, folks, is a genuine coincidence. I received these questions within two days of each other, leading me to wonder if I might not be missing some important news development that put "Dutch" on the tip of our collective tongue, but evidently not. Well, at least it beats getting three questions about "posh" every day.
The phrases "Dutch act," meaning "suicide," and "Dutch uncle," meaning someone who is not your uncle but gives you advice as if he were, are both linguistic relics of a low point in relations between England and The Netherlands. Back in the 17th century, when both countries were building their global empires, their intense rivalry found an outlet in a wide range of popular sayings invented by each country to insult the other. Since we are primarily an English-speaking culture, the few volleys in this linguistic war that have survived are, naturally, those disparaging the Dutch, but even those are rarely heard today. Some, such as "Dutch uncle," were probably originally meant to be more insulting than we consider them today.
According to Hugh Rawson, who explores the topic at length in his wonderful book "Wicked Words" (Crown Publishers), many of the English anti-Dutch terms became popular in the U.S. because of confusion with the word "Deutsch," or German, and were often applied to German immigrants. For the connoisseurs of insults among us, Mr. Rawson lists more than two pages of anti-Dutch slurs once popular. Along with "Dutch treat," which means no "treat" at all because each person pays his or her own way, other phrases once current included "Dutch courage" (liquor), "Dutch defense" (a retreat), "Dutch headache" (a hangover), "Do a Dutch" (commit suicide), "Dutch concert" (a drunken uproar), and "Dutch nightingale" (a frog), which seems an especially low blow.