Wat gebeurt er bij een drugscontrole in het verkeer

What does “speekseltest” mean in Dutch?

Speeksel means saliva, and Dutch simply joins it to test to make speekseltest — the roadside swab police use to check whether a driver has taken drugs. If the result is positive, a blood test follows. Dutch builds thousands of compound nouns this way: two words pushed together to make one exact new thing. Spot the parts and you decode the whole, even on first encounter.

The roadside scene in this clip makes the word impossible to forget: a police officer hands over the swab and says “mag je je mond openen?” (can you open your mouth?) — a live demo of the term as it is actually used. The Netherlands introduced the speekseltest in traffic stops in 2017; a positive result triggers a bloedonderzoek (blood examination), another transparent Dutch compound. That same word-building logic runs through the language: speekselklier (salivary gland), verkeerscontrole (traffic check), bloedonderzoek — each one a small, legible equation.