Triest na het einde van de polyglot gathering

What does “triest” mean in Dutch?

Triest simply means sad or dreary in Dutch. It comes from Latin tristis, the same root that gave French and Spanish their triste — but Dutch kept the extra -t, making it look more like a proper noun to Romance-language eyes. A speaker who knows triste might pause at triest for a split second, wondering if a city crept into the sentence. It hasn’t: it’s just the everyday Dutch word for sad.

In the clip, the speaker has just left the Polyglot Gathering — a multilingual festival — and reflects: “Ik ben dan altijd een beetje triest, zelfs een beetje depressief.” (“I’m always a little sad then, even a little depressed.”) The pairing with depressief makes the register clear: triest sits at the mild, everyday end of the sadness scale. You’ll also hear triestig (archaic/dialectal), but modern Dutch sticks with triest. Compare: French triste, Spanish triste, Italian triste — same Latin root, just Dutch adds the dental stop at the end.