natte

Natte is the inflected form of the Dutch adjective nat, meaning wet or damp. It is used to describe moisture on nouns and surfaces in everyday Dutch. In ordinary usage, natte appears in attributive position before a noun to express that the noun is wet, damp, or saturated. Examples include phrases like natte kleren (wet clothes), de natte straat (the wet street), and een natte handdoek (a wet towel).

Natte can also appear with indefinite nouns, as in "een natte doek" (a wet cloth). When the adjective is used in predicate position after a linking verb—such as het blijft nat or het is nat—the uninflected form nat is typically used, meaning the weather or general wetness is described without the attributive -e ending.

The form natte reflects Dutch adjective inflection rules, which modify the base adjective nat to agree with the noun in number and definiteness in attributive position. The word nat itself traces back to Old Dutch and is related to cognate terms in other Germanic languages that express wetness or dampness.

Usage notes:

- Natte is common in everyday description of weather, surfaces, clothing, and materials that have become wet.

- It is part of a broader system of inflected adjectives in Dutch, where endings change to align with the noun they describe.

See also: nat, Dutch adjective inflection, Dutch spelling and grammar.