The Dictionary of New Words (Woordenboek van Nieuwe Woorden or WNW) is an online dictionary in progress that describes words (or word combinations) that have entered the Dutch language or gained a new meaning since the year 2000. It contains quite detailed descriptions of neologisms: not just their definitions, but also information about grammar, spelling and etymology. For each word (or word combination) it is described when and under what circumstances it entered (and sometimes left) common use, showing the ‘life cycle’ of every word. You can also find the source in which the word has been used for the first time, and how the word was formed. Furthermore, the dictionary shows how the word fits into our language: how it may be similar to other, already familiar words, but still has its own meaning.
The WNW does not just describe words that have become firmly established in Dutch (such as app and selfie), but also many words that are used only for a short period. Many neologisms don’t ‘stick’ and are never registered in a general language dictionary, such as the ANW. However, it would be unfortunate if they were not registered anywhere, because their structure is often quite interesting. For instance, they may have a similar morphological structure to other new words (besides lokpubers there are also lokoma’s, lokfietsen and lokkoffers: all new compounds that start with the verbal stem lok-) and they tend to be similar in their formation and meaning to words that we are already familiar with. And what is more: new words clearly represent a certain period of time.
To describe new words, the WNW uses various sources. Apart from the internet, a very important source is the Corpus of Contemporary Dutch (Corpus Hedendaags Nederlands or CHN). This corpus also includes the ANW corpus, which contains more than 100 million words from all domains of society and was compiled specifically for that project.
Additionally, Woordpeiler (“Word Pollster”, https://woordpeiler.ivdnt.org/), an online application that facilitates the visualization and analysis of word frequencies in the Corpus of Contemporary Dutch (CHN) over time, also support the analysis of neologisms and lexical trends in Dutch since 2000.
Further information and links:
- About the WNW (in Dutch)
- About the CHN
- About the ANW corpus (in Dutch
- About Woordpeiler (in Dutch)