vuil
| EN | Dirty, soiled; foul; (figuratively) obscene or dishonourable. |
| NL | Bevuild, bezoedeld; ook: obsceen of laakbaar. In het hedendaags standaard-Nederlands grotendeels vervangen door 'vies' in de letterlijke zin. |
| AF | Vuil, besoedeld; ook: onwelvoeglik of skandelik. In Afrikaans het die woord sy volle semantiese bereik behou. |
Proto-form *fūlaz
First attested ca. 10th c., Old Dutch glosses (fūl); Middle Dutch 'vuul' w…
From Proto-West Germanic *fūl, from Proto-Germanic *fūlaz 'foul, rotten', cognate with English 'foul' and German 'faul'. In modern standard Dutch the literal 'dirty' sense has largely shifted to 'vies', while Afrikaans retains 'vuil' as the primary adjective for dirt and filth.
Dutch and Afrikaans 'vuil' continue Proto-West Germanic *fūl (adjective) and the related Proto-Germanic *fūlaz, themselves from Proto-Indo-European *pew-/*pū- (to stink, rot). The Old Dutch form fūl is attested from the 10th century; Middle Dutch 'vuul' / 'vul' is the expected development under High Dutch vowel shift avoidance in the Low Countries. The German cognate 'faul' underwent a semantic split early: 'lazy' (from the image of rotting food at rest) alongside 'rotten/foul', whereas Dutch 'vuil' retained the 'dirty/soiled' sense as primary. The most interesting synchronic story is the NL–AF divergence: in 20th-century standard Dutch, 'vies' (from Middle Dutch 'viisch', 'disgusting') progressively displaced 'vuil' in colloquial everyday 'dirty' contexts, so that younger Dutch speakers use 'vuil' mainly for figurative or intensified senses (e.g., 'vuil spel'). Afrikaans, geographically separated from this register shift, preserves 'vuil' as the default adjective for physical dirt, making it a clean diagnostic of the NL–AF lexical divergence that accelerated after 1700.
| Form | Language | Region | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| vuil | af | nationwide | Primary term for dirty in Afrikaans |
| vuul | nl | historical Middle Dutch | Medieval form |
| vul | nl | dialectal NL | Shortened dialectal variant |
| Language | Form | Gloss | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| en | foul | offensive, disgusting; (archaic) dirty | Direct cognate via Proto-Germanic *fūlaz |
| de | faul | lazy; rotten | Same Proto-Germanic root; semantic split to lazy/rotten rather than dirty |
| da | ful | ugly | North Germanic cognate, semantic shift to ugly |
| sv | ful | ugly | North Germanic cognate |
Drenthe Groningen Zeeland (NL older speakers); nationwide Afrikaans
◆ Standard replacementsThis word has been displaced in modern usage by: vies (NL colloquial); schmutzig / dreckig (DE equivalent not cognate) .
- WNT (Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal), s.v. *vuil*, online ed., Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal. https://gtb.ivdnt.org
- WAT (Woordeboek van die Afrikaanse Taal), s.v. *vuil*. https://www.wat.ac.za
- De Vries, J. (1971). *Nederlands Etymologisch Woordenboek*. Brill.
- Philippa, M. et al. (2003–2009). *Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands* (EWN), s.v. *vuil*. Amsterdam University Press. https://etymologiebank.nl
- Wiktionary, s.v. *vuil* (Dutch). Accessed 2026-04.
- Wiktionary, s.v. *faul* (German). Accessed 2026-04.
This entry anchors The Archive's central thesis: that the NL–AF lexical rift is a measurable proxy for the 300-year separation of two speech communities. When Anna van der Berg (Drenthe, b. 1938) or Wim Bakker (Friesland, b. 1935) speak about garden earth and soiled hands, they would likely use 'vies' today, whereas Maria du Toit (Karoo, b. 1934) and Sarie Coetzee (Natal, b. 1939) in the demo transcripts use 'tuin' and 'grond' — the same semantic field where 'vuil' would be the natural Afrikaans descriptor. The entry illustrates how lexical attrition in the donor language (Dutch) can be read off the archaic preservation in the colonial daughter variety (Afrikaans).