Well, it's _tentir_ that was borrowed from Dutch, and thus reveals some acquaintance with that language (quite normal amongst intellectuals and students in the 1950-s), whereas _tentor_ seems indeed to be a recent concoction based on _tentir_, and actually betrays practically zero knowledge of Dutch ;) Meanwhile, I did some more looking up last night, and found that the word _tenteren_ was not borrowed into Dutch from Latin _tentare_, but apparently from French _tenter_ 'to attempt, to tempt' instead, that in turn originates from the Latin. -- Waruno > Those seem to be reasonable conclusions, but what is especially interesting > is the relatively late appearance or re-emergence of _tentor_ if indeed > from _tentir_, considering how few Indonesians now have any useful command > of Dutch. It is still a bit of a puzzle in that respect. After being here > for nearly 30 years I first encountered it only last year. One more > possibility: it could have been a regional term that only spread with the > saturation of the Internet in society. I Googled and found a lot of > advertisements for tentor in the sense of a private teacher or tutor. > > Thanks//Ray