Winning words, the most popular words of 2012

Project X-feest, a Project X party, has been voted the Dutch word of the year by dictionary maker Van Dale, Onze Taal reports.

The word refers to a spontaneous party to which everybody is invited, and is named after the movie Project X which tells the story of a similar party. In September this year the small town of Haren suffered over 1 million euro in damages after looters and rioters visited Project X Haren.

The second place was awarded to the word bangalijst, a list of girls that are considered ‘easy’.

Some other words from the West considered good, influential or popular, all from Onze Taal:

• Omnishambles (English word of the year according to Oxford Dictionaries): “a situation that has been comprehensively mismanaged, and is characterized by a string of blunders and miscalculations”.
• GIF (American English word of the year according to Oxford Dictionaries): type of image format, popular because it allows for simple animations.
• Yolo (German word of the year according to Der Spiegel): abbreviation for ‘you only live once’.
• Watture (French word of the year according to Le Point): electric car (watt + voiture).
• Frietchinees (Dutch word of the year in Belgium according to Van Dale): a French fries stall run by a Chinese person.
• Pandapunten (most beautiful Dutch word says the Instituut voor Nederlandse Lexicologie): points you get for abstaining from sex.

Some of the ugliest words:

• Throughput (Dutch, the ugliest word in education).
• Grexit (ugliest Dutch word says the Instituut voor Nederlandse Lexicologie): the expulsion of Greece from the Eurozone.

One of my personal favourites, after watture, is the German word komasutra, the result of drunk people attempting to make love.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 22nd, 2012 at 2:12 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Tags: neologisms, words