burgerlijke

Burgerlijke is a Dutch adjective meaning civil, civilian, or bourgeois. It derives from burger, meaning citizen or townsman, and the suffix -lijk, which forms adjectives meaning related to or characteristic of. The form burgerlijke is used before a noun, following standard Dutch adjective inflection.

In legal and administrative language, burgerlijk is used for matters that relate to private or non-public law, as opposed to military or governmental domains. The term appears in compounds such as burgerlijk recht (civil or private law), burgerlijk procesrecht (civil procedure law), and burgerlijke stand (civil registry) which municipalities maintain to record births, marriages, and deaths. The civil status, or burgerlijke staat, denotes whether a person is single, married, widowed, or divorced.

Historically, burgerlijk could carry connotations of bourgeois or middle-class life in literature and social commentary, though in contemporary usage the primary sense is technical or descriptive within law and administration. In contrast to military affairs, burgerlijke matters concern civilian life and private relationships rather than state or armed forces.

The term is common in Dutch-speaking contexts, including the Netherlands and Flanders, and appears in official documents, legal texts, and government websites. Its usage helps distinguish civilian legal and administrative concepts from military or public authority contexts, reflecting long-standing distinctions in Dutch private and public law.