Rietje

What is a rietje?

A rietje is the Dutch word for a long thin stick of rattan or bamboo used for striking, usually on the buttocks. English calls it a cane. The Algemeen Nederlands Woordenboek lists that meaning separately and notes that children used to be punished with one at school, and that the word now lives mostly in BDSM circles. A second name is Spaans rietje, Spanish cane.

Where the word comes from

From the plant, and from how it moves. The Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands traces riet back to Germanic hreuda- and holds it possible that the root is Proto-Indo-European kreu-, “to shake, to sway”: the plant would then be named for the way it moves in the wind.

Striking is in it early. That same dictionary quotes a Middle Dutch line from 1285 in which the reed is already a tool: Ende sloeghen an thoft metten riede, that is, and struck him on the head with the reed.

Why you hear a rietje first

The swing. For this sense the dictionary records the verb that comes standard with it, zwiepen: a rietje swishes. So you hear the stick travel through the air before it lands, and that half a second of waiting is what I most often hear women call the most exciting part.

What it gives is sharpness, not a thud. A rietje bundles the force onto a narrow line instead of spreading it out the way a paddle does, and that line is exactly what it leaves behind. A gentle start is the one thing it does not give: if you have never been struck before, this is not the object to begin with.

What to watch for

A blow with a thin stick leaves a recognizable mark. In the forensic literature that pattern is called a tramline: two parallel welts with a pale band between them, and Manan and colleagues write that such a tramline points to a blow from a blunt, rod-shaped object. So count on it being visible, and agree where that is allowed: below the bikini line no one sees it, on your thighs they do.

Beyond that: agree a number before we start, and keep it to the fleshy part of your buttocks. Away from your tailbone and hip bones, because there is nothing between bone and skin there.

Where this fits on this site

If you want to know how a stick like this feels without getting ten of them straight away, we build it up slowly. The BDSM date page shows how an evening like this runs and what we go over beforehand.

Sources

• rietje. Algemeen Nederlands Woordenboek, Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal, consulted August 4, 2026. The ANW is the scholarly dictionary of contemporary Dutch. Supplies: sense 5.0, “long thin bamboo or rattan stick, with which children used to be punished at school,” with the subject label sex, gender and relationships and the addition “Nowadays used mainly in BDSM circles”; the fixed phrase Spaans rietje as a synonym; the verb zwiepen as the verb this sense combines with; and sense 1.0, the plastic or paper tube for drawing up a drink.
• riet. Etymologiebank, including M. Philippa et al., Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands (Amsterdam, 2003–2009). Supplies: the derivation to Germanic hreuda-; the possible kinship with the Proto-Indo-European root kreu- “to shake, to sway” and the matching explanation that the plant would be named for the way it moves in the wind; and the Middle Dutch source Ende sloeghen an thoft metten riede from 1285.
• A Multispecialty Approach to the Identification and Diagnosis of Nonaccidental Trauma in Children. Muhammad Romail Manan, Sara Rahman, Leah Komer, Hamna Manan & Saadia Iftikhar, Cureus 14(7), e27276, July 26, 2022 (DOI 10.7759/cureus.27276). Peer-reviewed review article, full text read via PubMed Central. Supplies only the forensic finding about the pattern: “Tramline pattern of bruising may suggest that the trauma was inflicted by means of a blunt, rod-shaped instrument.” The article is about injury in children and says nothing about play between adults; it is cited here only for what a rod-shaped object leaves on the skin.

Related terms

A rietje is the Dutch word for one piece of gear from impact play.

• Cane. The same object under its English name, with the material and the school history behind it.
• Caning. The act: how a series of strokes is built up and why the marks come later than the pain.
• Birch rod. The same family, but dozens of twigs instead of one line.
• Riding whip. Just as short, but leather instead of wood.
• Spanking. Where a rietje most often lands.