Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. See Low German.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Low German: used especially with reference to language. See II.
- n. The Low German language, in a restricted sense; the popular speech of northern Germany, possessing a considerable literature. See Low German, under German, n.
Wiktionary
- n. Low German
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. The modern dialects spoken in the north of Germany, taken collectively; modern Low German. See Low German, under german.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a German dialect spoken in northern Germany
Etymologies
- Borrowed from German Plattdeutsch. (Wiktionary)
- German (translation of Dutch Platduits, Low German) : platt, low, flat (from Middle Dutch plat, from Old French; see plate) + German Deutsch, German (from Middle High German diutsch, from Old High German diutisc, of the people; see teutā- in Indo-European roots). (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Anyway the man explained they are Mennonites, they speak a language called Plattdeutsch, which is a dialect of German, they work as farmers and live apart from the general Paraguayan community in a colony, in this particular colony, there are 5000 of them, they have their own schools and hospitals, basically a country within a country.”
“Metropolitan Museum of Art. Dijkstra is Dutch, actually, although Plautdeutsch, also called Plattdeutsch, was spoken in the lowland ares of Germany north of Holland.)”
“Kids play underfoot while the grownups deal, in Polish, Russian, north-Baltic, Plattdeutsch.”
“Folks have been teaching him dialects, Plattdeutsch for the zone the British plan to occupy, Thur-ingian if the Russians happen not to drive as far as Nordhausen, where die central rocket works is located.”
“Berlinese, whose vernacular is strongly tinged with _Plattdeutsch_ forms from the lower Elbe.”
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 17, No. 101, May, 1876
“America, the Modern Greek or Romaic, Lowland Scotch, and Plattdeutsch, the very frequent employment of diminutives has come to be a marked characteristic of the common speech of the people.”
“The High German now spoken in northern Germany is not of great age, but is due to the spread of standardized German, based on Upper Saxon, a High German dialect, at the expense of Plattdeutsch.”
“You can talk Plattdeutsch something grand, as long as you keep the verbs and nouns in American.”
“Aye, something of the sort, the servant replied in Plattdeutsch, and later I learned that this dialect had been in full swing here, as well as the Frisian, for over a hundred years; the dikemaster and the overseers and the other landholders!”
“Russian or the so-called Great Russian language; it bears somewhat the same relation to the latter as the Lowland Scotch does to English or the Plattdeutsch to German.”
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