The Society of Our Language has elected ‘wappie’ as the Our Language Word of 2021. The director of the language association, Vibeke Roeper, announced this on Dutch radio. A few days ago, ‘banging’ was already voted word of the year 2021 by Van Dale.
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More than 32 percent of the members of Onze Talen chose ‘wappie’, the organization reported in the radio program The language state (NPO1). ‘A wappie is a person who has a different view of the facts, for example when it comes to pandemic policy, and who is therefore sometimes considered strange’, explains Onze Taal in a press release.
‘Wappie is also used as a nickname. According to the members of Onze Taal, this word best characterizes the year 2021: it is a reflection of the corona policy that has a major impact on our lives, and the criticism of it.’
The word has been around since the 1990s. Initially, it was an adjective meaning ‘under the influence of drugs’ and ‘unwise’. In recent years, the word has become increasingly popular as a noun to refer to persons.
‘Wappie’ took it from ‘snotte bubble protocol’, ‘pandemo’ finished in third place. About fifteen percent of the society’s 22,000 members cast a vote. A year earlier, Onze Taal chose ‘one and a half meter society’ as word of the year.
Van Dale, in collaboration with the VRT, had chosen ‘banging’ earlier this week as word of the year in Flanders. The word received 37.2 percent of the nearly 7,000 votes. ‘Tile seesaw’, finished in two, ‘booster shot’ in three. In the Netherlands, ‘prikspijt’ was chosen as word of the year at Van Dale.
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