Waarom we zo vaak moe zijn door slecht slapen

What does “naft” mean in Dutch?

Naft is a Dutch (chiefly Flemish) word for petroleum or gasoline — and here the speaker uses it to say that sleep is de naft van ons lichaam, “the fuel of our body.” The metaphor works because naft is a physical, visceral kind of fuel — crude and essential — rather than the tidier word brandstof. Reaching for it signals that without sleep you are not just tired, you are genuinely running on empty.

In everyday Flemish Dutch, naft turns up in casual contexts wherever benzine or brandstof might appear in Netherlandic Dutch — “als ze er maar op tijd naft in doen” (“as long as they put fuel in on time”). The word traces back through Latin naphtha to Persian naft, meaning crude oil, and entered Dutch in the 18th century. Using it figuratively for sleep condenses the whole argument of the talk into one compact image: the body is an engine, and you cannot run it on reserve indefinitely.