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Animals in Dutch

The Dutch word for animal is het dier (plural de dieren). Animal vocabulary is worth learning early because Dutch is unusually rich in animal idioms — you cannot follow everyday conversation without knowing that een kat in de zak kopen has nothing to do with cats. This page gives you the words by category, then the idioms.

Pets (huisdieren)

A pet is een huisdier (literally “house-animal”). Most animal nouns are de-words; the notable het-exceptions are marked in the tables.

Dutch uses diminutives affectionately for pets: a cat is often een poesje, a dog een hondje, a rabbit een konijntje. Every diminutive is a het-word regardless of the base noun — see Dutch diminutives. There is also a specific set of words for the young: a puppy is een puppy or een jong, and a kitten is een kitten or een katje.

Farm animals (boerderijdieren)

The Netherlands is famously flat, green and full of livestock, so these words appear on every train ride through the countryside.

Birds and small creatures

Wild animals (wilde dieren)

Two useful spelling points: wolf → wolven and beer → beren show the f→v and long-vowel changes covered in Dutch plurals. And beware the homograph beer, which means both “bear” and (in another sense) has nothing to do with the drink bier — different spelling, different word.

Animal idioms the Dutch love

Dutch is genuinely full of animal expressions, and many come up in ordinary speech. Here the literal translation and the real meaning sit side by side.