Van Dale Uitgevers has withdrawn the election for ‘Word of the Year 2024’. The publisher reports this on its website. According to Van Dale, the election was hijacked by action groups and a “very unpleasant social discussion” has arisen. For that reason, the publisher itself has chosen the word of the year 2024: polarization.
“We are language descriptors, we are not a party to any social debate,” editor-in-chief of the Dikke Van Dale Ton den Boon said. NRC. According to him, the reactions this year were more intense than in other years and the decision to cancel the election was a logical consequence. “Our election is intended to show how alive Dutch is, how beautifully our language is developing,” says Den Boon.
Some of the ten nominations led to polarizing discussions on social media. According to Den Boon, this mainly concerned the words pager attack (referring to Israel’s attack on Hezbollah), transition regret (regret that transgender people may have about their transition) and Gen Z intern (young interns who use incomprehensible jargon for older colleagues).
Polarization
“We have found that even the Word of the Year election leads to polarization,” says Den Boon. According to him, there was no other choice for word of the year than the word polarization. With this choice, Van Dale breaks with a twenty-year-old tradition. The election is usually between words that were newly created in that year.
The decision to withdraw the election was difficult for the publishing house. Nevertheless, Den Boon is optimistic about the future: “Language will of course remain incredibly interesting, fun and important.”
It is not yet clear whether the Word of the Year election will be proclaimed again in the same form in 2025. “We are very creative people, we have about 360 days to come up with something. I am sure that something very nice will come out of it,” says Den Boon.