Mijn hond, brucellose en de dreiging van euthanasie

What does “zoönose” mean in Dutch?

In this Quest podcast clip the owner explains that her dog’s brucellose turned out to be “een zoönose die kan overslaan naar de mens,” a zoönose that can spread to people. A zoönose (zoonosis) is any disease that crosses from animals to humans, and the everyday verb for that crossing is overslaan, literally “to skip over.”

The word jumped into daily Dutch around COVID-19, but Dutch news uses it constantly for vogelgriep (bird flu) and Q-koorts (Q fever) too. The -ose ending marks a medical condition, the same suffix you see in brucellose and tuberculose. Learn this one word and you can follow a whole genre of Dutch health reporting.