Useful links
In the Netherlands, the word of the year (Dutch: woord van het jaar) is elected by different Dutch linguistic institutions. The word of the year refers to a new word selected through an election as the most distinctive or most important word characterizing the events of a year. The word swaffelen is perhaps one of the best known examples of a Dutch word of the year winner.
The first Dutch election for Word of the Year was set up in 2003 by Koen Gubbels of translation agency The Language Lab in Amsterdam. The Dutch version was inspired by existing American elections such as the Word of the Year election of the American Dialect Society and Merriam-Webster's Words of the Year. The intention was to use neologisms or old words that suddenly became popular again to provide an image of events that left their mark on a particular year. The website used user-generated content, where users could nominate words themselves.
In June 2006, the editorial staff of The Language Lab decided to close the website for financial and organizational reasons, after which Van Dale took over the election in 2007 in collaboration with the newspaper De Pers and Genootschap Onze Taal.[1] For that election, a pre-selection was made of the nominated words from which a favorite was chosen by site visitors.
Since the 2010 edition, the results were now separated into a Dutch and a Flemish part, the results were limited to three words and it was also possible to vote in different categories. In 2018, Van Dale decided to stop with the secondary categories and limit the election to a general result of three words.