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DUTCH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

Leiden.

Leiden (a city and municipality of South Holland, Netherlands)

6 characters2 syllables approx.Nederlands language

Meaning & usage

name/ˈlɛi̯.də(n)//ˈlɛi̯.ə/
  1. Leiden (a city and municipality of South Holland, Netherlands)

    neuter
Where this word comes from

From Middle Dutch Leiden, older Leithen, originally the name of the village now called Leiderdorp, then transferred to the younger nearby settlement. Formerly hypothesized to be from Middle Dutch lēde (“dyke, drainage channel”), but this is derived from the past stem *lid- of Proto-Germanic *līþaną (“to pass through”), thus requiring an original -d-, not -þ- (see Grammatischer Wechsel). The early ei-spelling also speaks against this derivation. Instead probably from a Frankish *Lagiþon, from Proto-Germanic *laguz (“water”) + the placename suffix *-iþi. The usual latinisation Lugdunum was taken from the name of a defunct historical settlement north of Katwijk, which was erroneously identified with Leiden. There is in all likelihood no relation between the two names.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.