Proverb: De een zijn dood is de ander zijn brood

De een zijn dood is de ander zijn brood — "one man's death is another man's bread" — is a grim little gem that captures how one person's misfortune can be another's livelihood. Grammatically it is a goldmine, because it preserves the colloquial "zijn"-possessive: the spoken Dutch way of expressing "X's Y" by saying X zijn Y ("X his Y"). This construction is alive in everyday speech but banished from formal writing, which makes the proverb a perfect lens on a register split most learners never get taught. This page unpacks the possessive, the de een … de ander pairing, the gnomic present, and exactly where you may and may not use this grammar.

The proverb

De een zijn dood is de ander zijn brood.

Literally: "The one his death is the other his bread." Idiomatically: one person's loss (or death) is another person's gain — what ruins one party makes another's fortune.

The closest English equivalents are "one man's loss is another man's gain" and the darker "one man's death is another man's bread." Think of the undertaker who profits from grief, or the rival who lands the contract a bankrupt company dropped.

What's happening grammatically

The "zijn"-possessive: de een zijn dood = de dood van de een

The heart of this proverb is a construction English has no real equivalent for: the colloquial possessive with a resumptive pronoun. To say "X's Y", spoken Dutch can say X + possessive pronoun + Y:

• de een *zijn dood = *de dood van de een ("the death of the one")
• de ander *zijn brood = *het brood van de ander ("the bread of the other")

Literally it reads "the one his death", with zijn ("his") inserted as a possessive linker between the owner and the thing owned. Linguists call this possessor doubling (the possessive-pronoun genitive); in everyday Dutch reference works it's simply the "Jan z'n / Jan zijn"-genitief. The owner comes first, then a possessive pronoun that "agrees" with the owner, then the possessed noun.

The crucial subtlety: the linking pronoun agrees with the gender and number of the owner, not the possessed thing. A male owner gets zijn; a female owner gets d'r / haar; a plural owner gets hun:

So why zijn twice in the proverb? Because de een and de ander are treated as generic masculine ("the one [man]", "the other [man]") — the default for an unspecified person in older Dutch. The proverb is fixed; you never adjust the pronoun in it.

Why English speakers misread it

The trap is reading de een zijn dood word-for-word as "the one his death" — as if "the one" and "his" were two separate people, the way English would parse it. They are not. De een is the owner, and zijn is just the grammatical glue that means "'s". The whole phrase de een zijn dood is a single possessive noun phrase equivalent to de dood van de een. Re-read it as "the one's death" and the proverb snaps into focus.

de een … de ander — the correlative pair

The proverb is built on the fixed correlative de een … de ander ("the one … the other"), which contrasts two unspecified people. De een is the first party, de ander the second; together they mean "this person versus that person", "some versus others". This pairing is productive well beyond the proverb.

The gnomic present

The verb is is — present tense of zijn ("to be"), in the gnomic present every proverb uses: a timeless general truth, "this is as a rule how it goes", not a report about now. That's why the saying works whenever you observe one party benefiting from another's downfall, past, present, or hypothetical.

How it's used

The proverb is said with a shrug — a wry, slightly cynical observation that misfortune redistributes rather than simply destroys. You use it when noting, often half-apologetically, that someone is profiting from another's bad luck: the locksmith after a break-in wave, the lawyer in a messy divorce, the competitor inheriting a collapsed firm's customers. It is not cruel; it's resigned, a comment on how the world works. Register is everyday/informal — fitting, since its very grammar (zijn-possessive) is spoken Dutch.

Vocabulary and register note

The construction's register is the whole point. The zijn-possessive (Jan zijn auto, Marie d'r tas, de buren hun hond) is completely normal in spoken and informal Dutch across the Netherlands and Flanders — you'll hear it constantly. But it is firmly excluded from formal and written Dutch, where you must use the van-genitive (de auto van Jan) or, for set phrases, the older -s genitive (Jans auto, mostly with names). Writing Jan zijn auto in an essay or email reads as substandard. So:

• Speech / informal: Jan zijn auto, Marie d'r fiets, de buren hun tuin — fine, idiomatic.
• Writing / formal: de auto van Jan, de fiets van Marie, de tuin van de buren — required.
• Set/proverbial: De een zijn dood is de ander zijn brood survives the zijn-possessive because it is a fixed saying — quoting a proverb is exempt from the register rule, the way English keeps archaic grammar in idioms.

That last point is the key insight: a learner who meets de een zijn dood and concludes "great, I can write de directeur zijn besluit in my report" has drawn the wrong lesson. The proverb is a fossil; the living construction underneath it is spoken-only.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• De een zijn dood uses the colloquial zijn-possessive: owner + possessive pronoun + possessed noun, equivalent to de dood van de een. Read zijn here as the apostrophe-s of English.
• The linking pronoun agrees with the owner, not the possessed thing: male → zijn, female → d'r/haar, plural → hun.
• de een … de ander is the correlative pair contrasting two unspecified people; is is the gnomic present.
• This possessive is spoken/informal only. In writing use the van-genitive (de auto van Jan). The proverb keeps it only because fixed sayings are exempt.
• The tone is wry and resigned: one party's misfortune is another's living — said with a shrug, not malice.