A strike is essentially nothing more than the suspension of an activity. A worker who stops working is on strike, just as a football match is halted by riots among supporters.
In the sixteenth century, words like "uitgangen , "ruyminge" ( , and "uitscheiding" (separation) used in the Low Countries to describe laying down work. The English word " strike" comes from the Dutch "strijken van de zeil" (sails) , an act of resistance in which sailors lowered their sails to protest. This word spread throughout Europe from the eighteenth century onward, developing variants such as " streik" in Germany, " strejk" (strejk) in Sweden and Denmark, "strajk" (strajk) in Poland, and "stajka" (stajka) in Russia. This is how the Dutch " " (stake) .
Romance languages have other terms for strikes . In France, grève to the Place de Grève in Paris, where unemployed people and strikers used to gather. In Italy, a strike is sciopéro , which roughly translates as "skipping work."
Those who do continue working during a strike are often given less flattering nicknames. In English, they're scabs , while in the Netherlands and Belgium we use the term rats .
