“My life is finished,” laughs writer Eric Alink from Den Bosch. The word ‘wiggle soul’, coined by him, is in fact included in the printed version of De Dikke van Dale. Although the meaning is slightly distorted, he says.
Because what exactly does ‘wobbly soul’ mean? “I came up with it in the summer of 2015,” Eric tells Brabant Today. “Then I accompanied staff in the care sector. They take action when people are mentally off the path, but avoid care. They then entrenched themselves with too much drink and junk in the house. I was looking for a word that does justice to the misery of those people.”
Thus the new word was born. And now, almost seven years later, it is actually part of the Dutch language. Although… “According to the Van Dale, a wobbly soul is ‘someone who has lost his mind’. But that is a bit too light-hearted. If after a visit to the toilet in a restaurant you no longer know whether your table was on the left or right, then you lose your mind for a while.”
And so the letter to the editors of the dictionary is ready. “If you include a word, the description has to do justice to how the creator once intended it. So I have every confidence that it will be corrected in the next edition.”
Wrong definition or not, Eric is overjoyed with the bit of recognition. In doing so, for example, he follows in the footsteps of fellow writer Martin Bril, who came up with ‘skirt day’ and Arjen Lubach, who is also included in the latest version of the Van Dale with his ‘fable trap’. “I can now die in bliss. Even when I’m gone, this word can always be found.”