New Amsterdam

American  

[am-ster-dam] / ˈæm stərˌdæm /

noun

1. a former Dutch town on Manhattan Island: the capital of New Netherland; renamed New York by the British in 1664.

2. a city in NE Guyana, on the Berbice River.

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New Amsterdam British  

noun

1. the Dutch settlement established on Manhattan (1624–26); capital of New Netherland; captured by the English and renamed New York in 1664

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New Amsterdam Cultural  

1. A city founded by Dutch settlers in the seventeenth century on the present site of New York City.

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An early governor of the Dutch colony surrounding New Amsterdam bought Manhattan Island, the present center of New York City, from the Native Americans for twenty-four dollars' worth of jewelry.

Example Sentences

Fittingly called New Amsterdam Cafe, the popular hangout opened in Vancouver in 1998 and is as chill as Issa Rae’s Hilltop Coffee.

From Los Angeles Times • May 24, 2024

She praised two recent examples — deaf actress Sandra Mae Frank's Dr. Elizabeth Wilder on "New Amsterdam," and Daryl Mitchell, who uses a wheelchair like his character Patton Plame on "NCIS: New Orleans."

From Salon • Jul. 26, 2023

Colonists lived in a band of farms and towns stretching along the Hudson River Valley from New Amsterdam, which is now New York City, north to the village of Beverwijck, now Albany.

From Textbooks • Dec. 14, 2022

That February, city and state officials reached a deal with Disney to restore and reopen the decrepit New Amsterdam Theater on a sleazy stretch of 42nd Street.

From New York Times • Nov. 16, 2022

And all of New York was called New Amsterdam, run by a man named Peter Stuyvesant.

From "Brown Girl Dreaming" by Jacqueline Woodson