tempo doeloe

Dutch

Etymology

Borrowed from Malay or Indonesian tempo dulu (“time of old, olden days”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˌtɛm.poː ˈdu.lu/

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Proper noun

tempo doeloe m or n

1. (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

• 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

Noun

tempo doeloe (first-person possessive tempo doeloeku, second-person possessive tempo doeloemu, third-person possessive tempo doeloenya)

1. Superseded spelling of tempo dulu (“time of old, olden days”). (pre-1947)