Meaning
An outing or meal at which each participant pays their own share rather than one person treating everyone else; the joke built into the phrase is that a treat funded individually is arguably no treat at all. It is chiefly American, while British and other speakers more often say 'going Dutch'. Informal and now mostly neutral, though it sits within a dated family of ethnic 'Dutch' compounds. Regional use: American English (widely understood elsewhere).
Origin
An American coinage of the 1870s. The earliest known citation is a Chicago Daily Tribune piece of June 1873 quoting a Vienna correspondent, who observed that in Germany drinkers seldom treat one another and suggested this custom - 'Dutch treat', each man paying his own reckoning - would curb heavy drinking in American saloons; here Dutch meant German (Deutsch) rather than Netherlandish. 'Go Dutch treat' is recorded from 1887 (Brooklyn Daily Eagle) and the short form 'go Dutch' from 1907 (Chicago Inter Ocean). The expression belongs to a large family of English 'Dutch' compounds, many coined with derisive force during the Anglo-Dutch rivalry of the 17th century, though the dining sense appears to have grown from this neutral description of a German custom rather than from mockery.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- doing Dutch
- Dutch date
- go Dutch
- going Dutch
Usage Examples
- Since nobody wanted to work out who owed what, the team agreed to a Dutch treat and each paid for their own order.
- The book club has been going Dutch ever since the month the treasurer's card was declined at dessert.
- Make it a Dutch treat, and no one has to pretend the cheapest thing on the menu is their favorite.