Zatt

Adjective: to be fed up, to have had enough, to be tired of something

The Dutch word "zat" is a muti-faceted word that generally denotes a large amount of something, with the connotation that it is 'too much'. In common conversation, it often means that somebody is drunk, or, in this particular case, you are "fed up". Other ways of saying this could include:

• I really don't care now
• What's the point now?
• I'm too old for this
• I'm not going to put up with this crap anymore
  
• I'm sick of this shit
• I don't give a fuck anymore
• It's too late for that shit

Or, my personal favourite:

• Fuck this shit

But there are those times in life you just really, really don't give a shit anymore. And when you have fallen in this deep, syllables are of a premium. A concise word is most welcome. You don't want to expend energy that you could otherwise be using to contemplate your own misery. Just ask anybody who is depressed how they are, and they will probably give you a one-word answer. ("fine")

The problem with the above phrases is that the most effective ones seem to have swearwords in them. While I don't think this is a coincidence, "zatt" has a very clear meaning and can eliminate the need for this.*

The English phrase "I'm fed up" is quite short, but with a bit of gazelle, we can do even better. How about just saying "I'm zatt"? Zatt is such a good word because it carries with it an air of despair, while still preserving some innocence. Someone who is 'fed up' might still want to stab somebody, but someone who is zatt is more likely to turn the knife on themselves. And while both of those scenarios are not great scenarios, I'd rather people stab themselves. Besides, most of those people just want attention. I'm zatt with those people. They are ruining the good repuation of the truly suicidal.

Of course, zatt doesn't have to be that heavy. You can be zatt with your work, zatt with your flatmates, and zatt with the sudden unannouced 16 cent rise (100%) in bake-off bread at all Dutch supermarkets. At least I was zatt with all those things.

How can the price of these jump from 16 cents to 32 cents overnight, of different brands at different supermarkets? It is a conspiracy, I am sure of it.


Example sentence:

"I'm zatt with this shit"

[* Although I said that zatt can replace swearwords, it doesn't necessarily mean I believe that they should.]

Dakless

Noun: a homeless person

In Dutch, the word "dakloos" is used to refer to homeless people. "Dak" meaning roof, and "loos" being the suffix meaning "without" (We saw this earlier in the Gazelle with "nutless").

There are a couple of reasons why I think this word is much more appropriate than the English "homeless".

Firstly, "home" is such a subjective word. One's home generally suggests a place where you feel at ease, whether it is a country, a town, or a building where all your stuff is. "Home" is one of those words that are a direct result of the bullshitting PC generation. A home is much easier to sell to people, it sounds nicer. But people don't live in "homes", they live in houses. A "home" is supposed to be comfortable, suggesting there is an excited dog, an obedient housewife, and a hot pie on the windowsill waiting for you. But this is just bullshit. You can do whatever you want with a house. Homeless people don't need a home, they just need a roof over their head. So, why don't we call them "houseless"?

This is how the comic legend George Carlin put it. (He then goes on to give a solution for homelessness)



Secondly, and the reason it should be called "dakless-ness", is because "daks" is a colloquial word meaning "trousers". It is most commonly used in the old English Dominions of Australia and New Zealand. Now, if one is dakless, you know they have some serious financial trouble and aren't just lazy.

Thirdly, yours truly is a recent dakless person and I want to raise awareness of this plight before my internet capabilities are gone. So before, I start growing my beard, cutting the fingers off my gloves, stealing a shopping cart, peeing in my underdaks and making funny signs, remember that it is not a home I want. I just want a roof above my head.

Example Sentence:

"Tell your children to avoid the dakless"

Sukkel

Noun: a loser (person), a pushover, a fall guy, a sap, a coward, a dweeb, e.t.c.

Sukkel is another Dutch word which can be used as an effective insult, but doesn't necessarily have to be. It isn't a particularly stinging insult, but the nature of the word makes it a great way to kick somebody who is already on the ground. The nuances of the word suckel might best be explained by certain scenarios.


Scenario One: The chronic sukkel

Some people are just born sukkels. They are people who, no matter what they seem to do, bad luck will follow them. However, at a certain point, you begin to lose pity for them. I mean, "the only common demominator from all your bad luck is you", right? And who knows, maybe these people want to keep up their sukkel-ing ways. The most classic example of a chronic sukkel would be William H. Macy from the movie, The Cooler. Bernie Lootz is such a sukkel, that he is employed by a casino owner to walk around the casino and 'cool down' people with a hot hand. Of course, he is such a sukkel that after a while, he can't even be a sukkel anymore.

What a sukkel.


Scenario two: The klutz.

This one is pretty simple. It is hard to have pity for people who break your stuff, no matter how sorry they are.

Okay okay, stop looking at me like that! I forgive you. You sukkel.


Scenario three: The wimp

The coward is a classic sukkel, and gives anecdotal evidence that sukkeling is a character flaw rather than unavoidable bad luck. This video is of a sukkel at a baseball game who dodges the ball coming towards him, letting it hit his girlfriend instead.



Notice the way that the girlfriend doesn't appear to be angry at him. She is a sukkel too.


Scenario four: The easy victim

For some people, it is just too easy.
If you try to take the money, you are such a sukkel.


Scenario five: The pussy-whipped guy

This is related to scenario four, and is often the most tragic form of sukkel-ism. You know, the guy who changes everything in his life for a girl. You know, the guy who disowns all their old friends, stops drinking beer, and starts wearing pleated pants? We all know someone like that. This form of social-castration is all the more tragic as it is brought on by somebody else.

This guy: such a sukkel

Of course, there are different levels of being pussy-whipped, but all of them makes you a sukkel. If you help an ex-girlfriend move your old furniture into her new boyfriend's house, you're a sukkel. If you see a girl on the side of the highway with a broken down car and you stop to help, you're a sukkel. If you pay a stripper a tenner for a lap dance and she doesn't even show partial nipple, you're a sukkel.



Hopefully, you have understood the different forms of sukkels in the world, and if you haven't, send me 10 dollars and I will explain it to you. (Sukkels)

Lull

verb: to talk nonsense, to blather on, to talk shit

This verb has gained wide appeal in Dutch, probably because the Dutch are very good at it. There are so many people that, for whatever reason, love to talk too much. Some people might be lonely (the elderly are often called an 'old lul'), they might be insecure and feel the need to talk a big game, they might be socially unaware and suffer from verbal diarrhoea, or they might be someone who wants something and is trying to talk their way into getting it.

There are two examples of the last form of lulling. The first is a direct result of the Dutch being ant fuckers. There are often so many rules in place, that getting some official business done can require a lot of paperwork and hassle. But the Dutch know that the best way to get anything done is to get someone on the phone, or go and meet someone responsible, and try lulling their way through it. This requires a delicate combination of friendliness, humour, playing dumb, and being shrewd. In this sense, the Gazellish 'lul' expands on the fairly limited English word "to lull", which is primarily a subtle way of tricking somebody. However, this is not quite accurate, as we all know that it takes two to lul: One to lul, and the other to be lulled.

In the other sense of lulling to get what you want, I had a colleague who said "I might not be so good looking, but I am capable of lulling any girl to bed."

This is especially appropriate since the word 'lul' actually is a slightly crude word for "penis". It can often be more accurately be translated to "douche", "idiot" or "fool". So, lulling might be like saying "dicking around". This also makes me laugh whenever I hear the phrase "there was a lull in the conversation", because it is often caused by someone making a fool of themselves. And it would make sense that people momentarily stop talking when someone flashes their piece during a conversation.

Note: This word's offensiveness dependes heavily on how well you know the other person. If a friend is talking too much or exaggerating a story, you'd tell him to 'stop lulling', similar as to how you could tell a friend to stop bullshitting, or to stop talking out of his ass (because, come on, it is often a guy thing). At least, that's what I tell my friends, which is perhaps why I don't have so many.


Note: Old whoring is merely one form of lulling.

Example sentences:

"The biggest lul on TV spends all his time lulling people into being scared and buying gold. I wish he would stop his lulling."

Yeah, the lul with those four sarcastic fingers.

Vergrendeled

To be stuck, locked up, frozen-up


"Vergrendeled" uses the prefix "ver", which, according to Wiktionary can be used in three ways, of which the first is the most pertinent:

1. to do or to become what the stem (following this prefix) refers to

We saw this earlier on in the year with "verkaased" which gazelled into "be-cheesed", to become like cheese. Vergrendeled works in much the same way, as it turns the object being refered to into Grendel, the horribly disfigured mythical monster as featured in the epic Poem "Beowulf". To give an impression of what this may look like, let's get into a quick gallery of images of Grendel over the years.

So, while there may be some historical discrepancy about what Grendel actually looked like, we can all agree that his appearance was not something to be desired.

Remember that tale about when you make a funny face, if the wind changes, you face will stay that way? Well, that is a classic example of being vergrendeled. Of course, objects can become vergrendeled too. The first time I heard it I was at a printer store, and a lady complained to the staff:

"My computer is ver-grendeled. Can you come and help"

I had a very graphic image of the computer being horribly disfigured and screaming insanely, which is kind of appropriate.

So, basically, anything that becomes misshapen or stuck in an undesirable way could be vergrendeled. This could be anything from a crashed computer, a skipping CD, a cake which has risen too much, two peaches that have grown into one, a particularly bad car accident, anything like that. The Gazellish way of thinking allows an undesirable situation become a much more descriptive one.


Example Sentence:

"This guy has been totally vergrendeled. What a sucker."

Squirting and Swallowing

verb: to take drugs

It is a strange fact of life that sometimes stereotypes are in fact opposite. This post concerns the usage of drugs in the Netherlands. The Netherlands makes a distinction between "hard" and "soft" drugs. Cannabis, a "soft" drug, is generally allowed in the Netherlands, yet usage is considerably lower than many countries who still crimminalise it, as seen by this graph. And I don't think this takes into consideration the massive amounts of drug tourism that Holland also generates.

People often explain this curious statist by saying that people like doing things that aren't allowed, but this seems like a pretty weak explanation to me. My hypothesis is related to the Dutch language. "Spuiten en Slikken" is a euphamism primarily for taking drugs. In fact, there is even a popular TV show which addresses drug and(/or) sex-related activities. I once saw a young female tv host try acid and go to a disco. Now that is reporting!


Quite literally, it can be translated as "squirting and swallowing", which suddenly makes taking drugs seem a little less attractive. Or at least, it is something you would put some more thought into doing. Because, even in Dutch, judging by a google image search I just made, there is a large connotation with some aspects of sexual intercourse you hope won't be on the video that God shows you at the pearly gates.

See, when drugs are illegal and most people seem to agree that there is relatively little harm to come from them, people might be quicker to go ahead and use them in spite of the legal risk. In Holland there is a much more open dialogue, and people can make a more informed decision as to whether they want to "squirt and swallow". So I think we could introduce this eupemism into the English language, and see if this affects the drug-use statitics. It could do no harm, except I suppose, to people who like freaky sex but are staunchly anti-drug. But those people can go screw themselves, which I am sure they will.

Example Sentence:

"Every year, hundreds of thousands of drug tourists come to Amsterdam for some squirting and swallowing which their home governments would not approve of."


Bonus: Another popular host of the show Spuiten en Slikken, Nicollete, famously posed for playboy last year to "report" on the experience. This has no real relevance to this post, but is still awesome.

Zuh

a suffix after a regular verb, to encourage the person to perform the action to their absolute best


Okay, the above definition is a little messy. I think it may be useful to give the most common example.
When I first began working for a temping agency in Holland, I got my first assignment. The cute girl at the counter (with whom I shared a birthday with) was extremely friendly and helpful, and I thanked her for the job which I badly needed. As I began walking away, she called out "Werk Ze!".

I was confused. Did she just call out to me "work it!", like horny females call out at strip clubs on ladies' night? I turned around, slightly confused but complimented. But she just said "werk ze" again, leaving me leaving confused.

Over the next few weeks of work, I kept hearing the phrase "werk ze", and it became obvious that it wasn't some kind of wolf whistle. I mean, I know I don't warrant that much femular attention, and it became a little unnerving when old ladies, and men called it out.

It turns out this is a phrase that means "Do your best" or "Keep up the good work" or "Work hard" (or more accurately, in a freer transaltion: "Don't work too hard"). It is such a simple, efficient phrase, and what I love about it the most is that strangers often say this to each other. I especially heard this when I was working the late shift, and the customer felt sympathy for the crappy work I was doing. It is a simple and nice gesture, one that actually helps make you feel better despite the crappy work. I think the English language could use such a friendly phrase, because it sounds demeaning telling a stranger to "work hard".

Although work-zuh is really the only common use for zuh, I learnt that it is possible to say it with other verbs. The main other occasion that I am aware of is when serving food to customers. "Eat-zuh" can be said instead of the regular "eet smakelijk", although I found it is less polite and wouldn't say it to old people. Maybe I am ageist. Perhaps the nuance is when someone is about to get stuck into a large portion, and they would need to eat to their utmost ability to finish it.

After the revelation of the suffix "zuh", I began to use this in my everyday English conversations to ridiculous effect.

• Instead of 'goodnight' I would say 'sleep-zuh'
• Instead of 'study hard' it would be 'study-zuh'
• When someone was going to the supermarket, I'd tell them 'shop-zuh'
• If someone was about to go out to a party, it'd be 'drink-zuh'

I am sure you could come up with some much more inappropriate ones like I have. Basically, it is a way to tell someone to succeed at, and enjoy whatever they might be doing. And this can never be a bad thing.

Example Sentences
Let's make a quick quiz to see if you can make your own "zuh" words from these pictures. Choose from the multi-choice options. (Note: there are probably no wrong answers.)

A) Act-zuh
B) Botox-zuh
C) Adopt-zuh

A) Drill-zuh
B) Spill-zuh
C) Clean-zuh
A) Swing-zuh
B) Drill zuh
C) Spill-zuh
D) Apologise-zuh