Breakdown of Hij weigert de leugen op te biechten, en ik heb het ermee gehad.
ik
I
hij
he / it (referring to a 'de'-word)
en
and
hebben
to have
het
it
de leugen
the lie
te
to (infinitive marker)
weigeren
to refuse
ermee
with it
opbiechten
to confess (a secret or sin)
Questions & Answers about Hij weigert de leugen op te biechten, en ik heb het ermee gehad.
Why are het and ermee used together in the second clause?
They form the fixed idiomatic expression het ermee gehad hebben (to be fed up with it). The het and the er (inside ermee) are "lexicalized" here. This means they are permanent, built-in parts of the expression rather than pronouns pointing back to a specific noun. It is very similar to the English phrase "I have had it with it".
Can I replace ermee with met de leugen if I want to be more specific?
Yes, but the sentence structure changes slightly. The base idiom is het gehad hebben met (to be fed up with). If you name the specific thing, you use met: Ik heb het gehad met de leugen. When you replace "with the lie" with "with it", met + het turns into the pronominal adverb ermee, which shifts earlier in the sentence: Ik heb het ermee gehad.
Why is te sandwiched inside op te biechten?
Opbiechten (to confess) is a separable verb (op + biechten). When a separable verb is used as an infinitive with te (which is required here because of the verb weigeren, "to refuse"), the te always goes directly between the separable prefix and the root verb.
Why does het come before ermee?
Even though they are part of a fixed idiom, they still follow standard Dutch word order rules. The pronoun het acts as a definite direct object, and in Dutch, definite direct objects almost always come before pronominal adverbs like ermee. Finally, the past participle gehad is pushed to the very end of the clause.
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