Where does the expression going dutch come from?
“Going Dutch” is a linguistic relic of a low point in relations between England and The Netherlands. Back in the 17th century, when both countries were building their global empires, their intense rivalry found an outlet in a wide range of popular sayings invented by each country to insult the other. Since we are primarily an English-speaking culture, the few phrases that have survived are, inevitably, those disparaging the Dutch, but even those are rarely heard today. Many of the English anti-Dutch terms became popular in the U.S. because of confusion with the word “Deutsch,” or German, and were often applied to German immigrants.
