In Amsterdam the courts have given leave to ban the bierfiets. Fiets is the Dutch for ‘bike’. (The plural is fietsen.) A bierfiets is a float on which a dozen people sit on high seats facing each other across a narrow bar running fore and aft, enjoying their beer and pedalling away to power the vehicle. Someone sits at the front to steer and brake.
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Some suggest that bierfiets has entered the English language as the name of this newish thing. I’m not sure it really has, any more than many another name in a foreign language for foreign things (churros or currywürste). If the bierfiets itself survives it is as likey to be called a beer-bike in English.
A word with a bit of staying-power in English is Boris-bike, even though Boris Johnson is no longer Mayor of London and the bicycles there are now sponsored by Santander in place of Barclays.
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