“…die buite-oond gebak. Die hele werf het lekker geruik.…”
lekker
//ˈlɛkər//
adjective
Active
NL
AF
EN
| EN | Tasty, delicious; pleasant, nice, enjoyable; (South African English loan) good, great. |
| NL | Smakelijk, heerlijk; aangenaam, plezierig. Informeel ook als algemeen positief beoordelingswoord; kan ironisch zijn. |
| AF | Lekker, heerlik (smaak); aangenaam, prettig. Breed inzetbaar positief evaluatiewoord; ook as bywoord ('ons het lekker gespeel'). |
| DE | Lecker: smackhaft, köstlich (naher Kognat); in der modernen deutschen Standardsprache auf Geschmack und Geruch eingeschränkt. |
Proto-form *likkōną (verb root)
First attested Middle Dutch 'lecker' ca. 13th c.; modern Dutch 'lekker' wi…
From Middle Dutch 'lecker', derived from the verb 'lekken' (to lick), from Proto-Germanic *likkōną. Cognate with German 'lecker'. Entered South African English as a loan from Afrikaans/Cape Dutch, where it expanded well beyond taste to a general positive evaluator.
Middle Dutch 'lecker' is a deadjectival derivative of 'lekken' (to lick), from Proto-Germanic *likkōną (cf. Old English 'liccian', German 'lecken', Gothic 'bi-laigōn'), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *leyǵʰ- (to lick). The original sense was therefore literally 'worth licking', i.e., tasty. In German, 'lecker' has remained largely restricted to taste and smell contexts ('leckeres Essen'), a narrowing relative to the Dutch/Afrikaans trajectory. In Dutch, 'lekker' underwent broad semantic bleaching during the 17th–18th centuries to cover any pleasant experience — 'lekker slapen' (sleep well), 'lekker weer' (nice weather) — and also acquired the capacity for irony in colloquial speech ('dat is lekker handig', not). In Afrikaans the trajectory continued: 'lekker' functions as an all-purpose adverb of positive evaluation with almost no register restriction. The South African English loan preserves the Afrikaans semantic breadth and is documented in the OED under the South African English sublexicon.
| Form | Language | Region | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| lekker | nl | nationwide | Standard Dutch |
| lekker | af | nationwide | Standard Afrikaans, broader semantic range |
| lekker | en | South Africa | South African English loan, OED documented |
| lecker | de | nationwide | German near-cognate, restricted to taste/smell contexts |
| Language | Form | Gloss | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| de | lecker | tasty, delicious | Direct cognate from same Middle High German root; semantically narrower |
| en | lick | to pass the tongue over | Shares Proto-Germanic *likkōną root |
| sv | läcker | tasty, delicious | North Germanic cognate via parallel development |
| da | lækker | tasty, delicious; attractive | North Germanic cognate |
Netherlands (nationwide); South Africa (nationwide all varieties); diaspora Dutch worldwide
◆ Standard replacementsThis word has been displaced in modern usage by: None — 'lekker' remains primary in NL and AF .
The following are direct transcriptions from recorded elder voices in which this word was used.
- WNT, s.v. *lekker*. https://gtb.ivdnt.org
- WAT, s.v. *lekker*. https://www.wat.ac.za
- OED Online, s.v. *lekker* (South African English). Oxford University Press.
- Philippa et al. (2003–2009). EWN, s.v. *lekker*. https://etymologiebank.nl
- Wiktionary, s.v. *lekker* (Dutch). Accessed 2026-04.
'Lekker' is the most frequently cited 'untranslatable Dutch/Afrikaans' word in popular heritage discourse and sociolinguistic literature on Dutch identity. Its semantic trajectory — from 'lick-able' to a broad positive intensifier — makes it a textbook case of semantic bleaching preserved across two branches. The demo transcript of Maria du Toit (Karoo) uses 'lekker geruik' (smelled wonderful), while Jan Botha's 'Die hele werf het lekker geruik' is a direct attestation of the Afrikaans adverbial use. Cross-referencing these transcripts lets the platform surface 'lekker' as a live lexical fingerprint.