New Amsterdam
- proper noun
- /nuː ˈæmstəˌdæm/
- After years of skirmishing with townsfolk over whose interests would prevail in New Amsterdam—those of the settlers or those of the corporate sponsor, the West India Company—Stuyvesant ended his rule by handing over control to the English.
Examples
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For this is the famously irascible Peter Stuyvesant, the director-general of New Amsterdam from 1647 to 1664.
Blog text (27) -
New York City was founded as the Dutch colonial outpost New Amsterdam in the first decades of the 1600s, near existing Lenape settlements.
Academic text (2006) -
In the year 1664 AD, the British occupied the city of New Amsterdam and named it "New York" in honor of King James II, who holds the royal title Duke of York.
Blog text (12) -
Europeans, especially the Dutch migration to New York, led to the southern part of the area in 1614 in Manhattan (New Amsterdam) being called.
Blog text (12) -
A group of 23 Sephardic Jews arrived in New Amsterdam in 1654 from Recife, Brazil.
Academic text (2006) -
The following excerpt is from a report written shortly after the British takeover of New Amsterdam in 1664, quoted in Keller.
Academic text (2006) -
The original Dutch settlement, known as New Amsterdam, became an important trading post in the 17th century.
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In 1664, the English captured New Amsterdam and renamed it New York.
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The city's history began with the establishment of New Amsterdam at the southern tip of Manhattan Island.
Surface Forms
Morphology
New + Amsterdam
As a proper-name title, knowing 'new' and 'Amsterdam' only suggests something recent or related to the city; it does not signal that this is the name of an American medical-drama TV series set in a hospital. Recognizing the MWE as a TV show requires specific cultural/encyclopedic knowledge rather than compositional decoding, so it is not derivable from the parts.
Etymology
New Amsterdam was the name Dutch settlers gave to the small town at the southern tip of Manhattan, a busy port with wooden houses and trading ships. That's why New Amsterdam now means the original settlement that the English later 'renamed' 'New York'.