tempo doeloe
Dutch edit
Etymology edit
Borrowed from Malay or Indonesian tempo dulu (“time of old, olden days”).
Pronunciation edit
Proper noun edit
- (Netherlands) The period of the Dutch East Indies, the period of Dutch colonisation in Indonesia, in particular as a nostalgic construct in personal, familial or social history; even more specifically, the time between 1870 and the beginning of the First World War around 1914.
Usage notes edit
- The term is chiefly used by Indo Dutch people (both Europeans and Eurasians) with a sense of nostalgia in reference to a bygone, semi-mythologised era. It is also used for a period before one's own life time. It is not well known outside the Indo Dutch demographic.
- Its use for the late nineteenth and early twentieth century is informed by a certain 'pioneer' romanticism, because this was a period of early modernisation before large-scale industrialisation, also a time when Dutch settlement increased but was still too small to form a wholly closed caste isolated from the native population.
Indonesian edit
Noun edit
tempo doeloe (first-person possessive tempo doeloeku, second-person possessive tempo doeloemu, third-person possessive tempo doeloenya)
- Superseded spelling of tempo dulu (“time of old, olden days”). (pre-1947)