This paper tries to historicize the myth of standard language neutrality by evidencing when and why it arose and which function it performed in public and academic discourses on language. The historical development of Dutch metalanguage sketched in this article involves a (decisive) conceptual shift (around 1800) from neutrality as a shared space, -leaving place for variation and regarding standard forms as additions to extant repertoires-, to neutrality as unmarkedness, -regarding standard forms as the sole real linguistic forms-. This decisive shift coincides with the emergence of linguistic nationalism as side effect of the progress of nationalism as a political ideology and of the genesis of the novel (western) European nation-states.