Word.ws English Dictionary

sooterkin

sooterkin noun: a mouse-like creature which, according to folklore, Dutch women who sit over stoves give birth to.

Noun

sooterkin (plural sooterkins)

  1. A mouse-like creature which, according to folklore, Dutch women who sit over stoves give birth to.
  2. (figuratively) An abortive scheme.
    • Fruits of dull heat, and sooterkins of wit.1728, [Alexander Pope], “(please specify the page)”, in The Dunciad. An Heroic Poem. […], Dublin; London: […] A. Dodd, →OCLC
  3. (colloquial) A Dutch person.

Forms of sooterkin

pluralsooterkins

Origin of sooterkin

From dialectal Dutch zoeterke(n) (“sweatheart”) (compare zoetje, zoetke (“sweetheart”)), equivalent to sweet + -kin or soot + -kin.

Questions about sooterkin

What does sooterkin mean?
Sooterkin means a mouse-like creature which, according to folklore, Dutch women who sit over stoves give birth to.
What part of speech is sooterkin?
Sooterkin is a noun.
What is the plural of sooterkin?
The plural of sooterkin is sooterkins.

Words near sooterkin in the dictionary

  1. sooten
  2. sootened
  3. sootening
  4. sootens
  5. Sooter
  6. sooterkin
  7. sooterkins
  8. Sooters
  9. sootfall
  10. sootfalls
  11. sootflake

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sooterkin (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “sooterkin.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sooterkin. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.