overwordExplorer
DUTCH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

pech.

bad luck; misfortune

4 characters1 syllables approx.Nederlands language

Meaning & usage

noun/pɛx/
  1. bad luck; misfortune

    masculine · no-diminutive · uncountable
  2. breakdown, e.g. of a car

    masculine · no-diminutive · uncountable
Where this word comes from

From German Pech (“bad luck; pitch, tar”), from Old High German peh, from Latin pīx. Doublet of inherited pek (“pitch”). Also cognate with English pitch. The sense “breakdown” is a Dutch innovation. It is probably modelled on the word ongeluk, which means both “bad luck, misfortune” and “accident”. Since pech typically denotes a lesser kind of bad luck, it came to be used for a lesser kind of traffic accident too. German uses Panne instead; compare Dutch panne.

FROM WORD TO NAME

Try it on your idea.

pech has 4 characters. Say it out loud, try it alongside a description of your project, and see whether its meaning fits what you want to create.

pech studiopech workshello, pech

These are naming prompts. Meanings and pronunciation can vary; existing brand and domain uses have not been checked.

Explore the name generator

A word with a source.

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.