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DUTCH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

heden.

presently

5 characters2 syllables approx.Nederlands language

Meaning & usage

adv/ˈɦeː.də(n)/
  1. presently

  2. today

    rare
Where this word comes from

From Middle Dutch heden, also hude, huden, from Old Dutch hiudo, a contraction of the instrumental phrase *hiu dago (“on this day”), from Proto-West Germanic *hiu dagu, from Proto-Germanic *hinō dagō (*hiz + *dagaz). The appearance of the vowel -e- is unusual, the expected form in modern Dutch would be *huide(n), compare huidig. Cognate with Old Saxon hiudu, hūdigu, German heute, West Frisian hjoed, Old English hēodæg.

noun/ˈɦeː.də(n)/
  1. the present

    neuter · no-diminutive · uncountable
    We moeten in het heden leven, niet in het verleden.
Where this word comes from

From Middle Dutch heden, also hude, huden, from Old Dutch hiudo, a contraction of the instrumental phrase *hiu dago (“on this day”), from Proto-West Germanic *hiu dagu, from Proto-Germanic *hinō dagō (*hiz + *dagaz). The appearance of the vowel -e- is unusual, the expected form in modern Dutch would be *huide(n), compare huidig. Cognate with Old Saxon hiudu, hūdigu, German heute, West Frisian hjoed, Old English hēodæg.

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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.