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DUTCH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

amper.

scarcely, barely

5 characters2 syllables approx.Nederlands language

Meaning & usage

adv/ˈɑmpər/

  1. scarcely, barely

    Dat is amper de moeite waard!
Where this word comes from

Inconclusive. Whilst its current definition was long thought to have come from Indonesian hampir due to its exclusive presence in Dutch (and no other Germanic language), this would not explain its high and almost universal usage in Flemish. More likely would be if it originated on Dutch soil. In that case, the meaning would have changed somewhat from the earlier Middle Dutch amper (“sour”) – compare the semantic development of German sehr (“very”), Alemannic German rüüdig (“very”). This word, in turn, is Germanic, and a cognate to the Swedish amper, German Ampfer.

adj/ˈɑmpər/

  1. sour

    archaic
Where this word comes from

Inconclusive. Whilst its current definition was long thought to have come from Indonesian hampir due to its exclusive presence in Dutch (and no other Germanic language), this would not explain its high and almost universal usage in Flemish. More likely would be if it originated on Dutch soil. In that case, the meaning would have changed somewhat from the earlier Middle Dutch amper (“sour”) – compare the semantic development of German sehr (“very”), Alemannic German rüüdig (“very”). This word, in turn, is Germanic, and a cognate to the Swedish amper, German Ampfer.

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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.