Plak

What is a plak?

A plak is a hard, flat, disc-shaped blade on a short handle, used for striking. It is the Dutch word for the object the scene usually calls a paddle, and it is centuries older than the play around it. Up until the nineteenth century the plak was the schoolmaster’s tool, and it came down on the inside of the hand.

Where the word plak comes from

From the classroom. The Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal describes the plak as “the rod of the schoolmaster in the old days; a short stick with a disc on one end, with which he could give the children a stinging blow on the inside of the hand.” Plantijn noted the word in 1573 alongside the French ferule, and Kiliaan did the same.

That same article turns up a detail that sounds oddly modern. The nineteenth-century cultural historian Schotel describes how plakken differed in make and size: round and oval, thick and thin in the blade, with a smooth surface or, instead, “cut with a diamond pattern, to sharpen the impression on the hand.” There were also examples fitted with braided copper wire, iron points or inset pins, which by that same account tore skin and flesh from the hands. If you wonder why the things were built that way, the answer is in the shape.

The word itself belongs to plak in the sense of “disc, flat piece.” The Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands traces it back to Middle Dutch placke, in 1371 still the name of a coin, and names outright the early modern Dutch plack in the sense of “a punishment tool to strike with.”

What “onder de plak” means

Powerless. The plak stood so firmly for authority that the object vanished from the schools and the expression stayed. The WNT gives “onder de plak komen, zijn, zitten” as: coming under another’s power, able to do nothing without their say-so, having no voice of your own. Next to it stands “de plak voeren,” to hold authority and impose your will on others, and “een man met de plak,” someone with sway.

Van Dale once illustrated the expression with “hij staat onder de plak van zijne vrouw, zij is hem de baas” (he is under his wife’s thumb, she is the boss). For a glossary about power exchange that is a nice find. Dutch borrowed its word for surrender from exactly the object lying here on the shelf. Someone who plays with a plak today does willingly what generations of schoolchildren had to endure, and that difference is the whole difference.

Where this fits on this site

If you want to know how a plak feels, you do not have to buy one yourself to find out. The page on the BDSM date explains how an evening like this is built up and what we settle beforehand about limits and safe words.

Sources

• PLAK (II). Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal, via the Integrated Language Database of the Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal. Supplies the description of the plak as the schoolmaster’s rod with a disc on one end, aimed at the inside of the hand; the mention in Plantijn from 1573 (plack, oft palmaet, with the French ferule) and in Kiliaan; Schotel’s description of round and oval plakken, thick and thin in the blade, smooth or “cut with a diamond pattern, to sharpen the impression on the hand,” and of examples with copper wire, iron points or pins; and the expressions “onder de plak komen, zijn, zitten,” “de plak voeren” and “een man met de plak,” with the example from Van Dale.
• plak (disc, flat piece). M. Philippa, F. Debrabandere, A. Quak, T. Schoonheim & N. van der Sijs, Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands (2003–2009), via Etymologiebank. Supplies the origin from Middle Dutch placke, a coin name in 1371, the possible derivation from placken “to strike” with plak as a “flattened object,” and the explicit mention of early modern Dutch plack “a punishment tool to strike with.”

Related terms

A plak is Dutch gear within impact play, and the word the language kept its expression for dominance from.

• Paddle. The same object under its English name, with the American school history and the sizes from the regulations.
• Impact play. The family a plak belongs to.
• Corporal punishment. The broader concept the school plak is a historical example of.
• Discipline. The part of BDSM that works with rules and punishment, which this word history connects to directly.
• Birch rod. The other European punishment object the scene took over, and one the WNT often names in the same breath as the plak.
• Riding whip. Dutch gear of the other kind: bundling instead of spreading.
• Spanking. Where a plak lands today, rather than on the hand.
• Tawse. The Scottish counterpart, which kept landing on the hand right up until 1987.
• Flyswatter. The same flat blade in its cheapest form, with a handle that bends along.