Kerker

What is a kerker?

Kerker is the Dutch word for a dungeon: a room fitted out to play in. Outside the scene, kerker simply means prison cell, and that’s the older meaning too. Whoever picks the word picks the prison association along with it; whoever doesn’t want that says playroom.

Where the word comes from

Out of Latin, and early. The Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands traces kerker back to the Latin carcer, “prison”, and records the oldest Dutch attestation between 1220 and 1240: dar hiet hine in dien kerker duon. It’s an early borrowing, because Old Saxon (karkari) and Gothic (karkara) knew the word already. Along the way the a before r plus a guttural became an e, the same pattern as in merk.

What stands out is the meaning. It hasn’t shifted in eight hundred years: from 1220 to well into the twentieth century a kerker was a place you sat because someone else had decided it, and not because you had agreed to it yourself.

What a kerker used to be

A cell in a cellar. The Dutch-language encyclopedia describes kerkers as rooms in castles, strongholds, fortresses and city gates, usually on the cellar floor, and usually cold, damp and dark. Only from the Renaissance did actual prisons and houses of detention appear alongside them. The worst variant was called a vergeetput or oubliette: an underground kerker where the condemned were left to their fate.

Kerker or dungeon: what you say when

The same room, a different register. Anyone renting or advertising a space almost always uses dungeon, and that page sets out what such a room should have and how renting works. Kerker I mostly hear in conversation, and then almost always from people who want the image with it: the stairs going down, the idea of being put away. That’s exactly the difference. Dungeon describes the fit-out, kerker describes the feeling someone is after.

Handy to know, because it helps when you search. Landlords in the Netherlands put their space online under the English word, so anyone searching for “kerker huren” mostly finds medieval castles.

Where this fits on my site

I don’t have a kerker myself; I come to you, or we rent something for the occasion. The page about the BDSM date sets out how we make that choice, and what a room does or doesn’t make possible.

Sources

• kerker. Etymologiebank, hosted by the Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal, with the entry from the Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands (Philippa et al., 2003-2009) and the one from the Nederlands Etymologisch Woordenboek by De Vries (1971). Supplies the derivation from Latin carcer “prison”, the Middle Dutch attestation from 1220-1240 with the phrase dar hiet hine in dien kerker duon, the sound change a to e before r plus a velar as in merk, and the related early borrowings Old Saxon karkari and Gothic karkara.
• Kerker. Wikipedia (Dutch-language). Supplies the description of the kerker as a medieval name for a room in which people were held captive, fitted out in castles, strongholds, fortresses and city gates and usually on the cellar floor, the observation that these quarters were often cold, damp and dark, the rise of prisons and houses of detention from the Renaissance, and the vergeetput or oubliette as the underground variant where the condemned were left to their fate.

Related terms

• BDSM. The umbrella a kerker is a room for, with the practices that happen there.
• Dungeon. The same kind of room under the scene word, with the inventory and the renting to go with it.
• Cage. The cage that often stands in such a room, and where the locking-away becomes literal.
• St Andrew’s cross. The piece of furniture you meet in just about every kerker.
• House rules. What applies the moment the room isn’t yours.
• Dungeon monitor. The person who keeps watch in such a room at a party.
• Playroom. The homely word for the same room, without the weight of kerker.
• Play party. The evening held in such a room.