Figurative Language
Figurative Language
Advanced Dutch idiom is drawn from water, farming and trade — the country's three oldest preoccupations. de dans ontspringen, op de lange baan schuiven and het roer omgooien all belong to registers where a plain verb would sound blunt.
Grammar Comparison
Grammar Comparison
Idiomatic phrases replace plain verbs in formal speech
op de lange baan schuiven (uitstellen), van de hand wijzen (afwijzen)
to shelve indefinitely (to postpone), to reject out of hand (to reject)
In debate and journalism, a plain verb often gives way to an idiom that adds evaluation: uitstellen is neutral, op de lange baan schuiven implies the delay is deliberate and unwelcome. van de hand wijzen carries more finality than afwijzen. Choosing the idiom is therefore not decoration — it inserts a judgment the plain verb does not make.
Idioms follow all the usual word-order rules
Het voorstel werd van de hand gewezen. Ze hebben het roer omgegooid.
The proposal was rejected out of hand. They've changed course.
Because idioms contain ordinary verbs, they passivize, take participles, and split their separable prefixes: omgooien becomes omgegooid with ge- inside. The fixed noun material — de hand, het roer — stays in the middle field. This means an idiom can be spread across a long clause with its pieces widely separated.
Some images are shared with English, some are not
het kind met het badwater weggooien / spijkers op laag water zoeken
to throw the baby out with the bathwater / to nitpick
A few idioms translate image for image — the bathwater one is identical in both languages. Others are opaque: spijkers op laag water zoeken ('looking for nails at low tide') means to raise trivial objections, and de kool en de geit sparen ('sparing the cabbage and the goat') means trying to please both sides. Guessing from the picture is unreliable, so each needs learning with its meaning.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
- English
- to have a narrow escape
- English
- to shelve indefinitely
- English
- to change course
- English
- to reject out of hand
- English
- to examine one's own conscience
- English
- to nitpick
- English
- to try to please both sides
- English
- a storm in a teacup
- English
- to disregard something
- English
- to throw the baby out with the bathwater
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