The new Dikke van Dale is bursting with Covid-19
My favorite expression was definitely the summer of love. Even though it wasn't an excuse for me to dance joyfully, because: in a long relationship. I felt a vicarious desire for it. It felt a bit like Bryan Adams’ Summer of '69, but better. The summer of the vaxxed and waxxed was short but powerful, luckily the Dikke van Dale is there to remind us of what once was.
Today, the dictionary producer announced which gems will be added to the impressive reference work. The new edition contains thousands of new words, but also about 10,000 fresh expressions, proverbs, and fixed connections. For the latter, you basically have to go back to school, because sticking, disconnecting, and using the hyphen is not the same year after year and unnecessarily complicated. Now that frustration is out of the way, we can continue with the infection of the Dikke van Dale, because the publication has quite a grip.
The sweetest addition to the upcoming Van Dale is definitely knuffelcontact. You just know that it's going to be cozy. The word already made it to word of the year with our southern neighbors in 2020 and can now officially stay. By the way, ours was anderhalvemetersamenleving, which immediately makes it clear who the real cozy people are. The further south, the more cuddly.
Knuffelcontact is with someone you don't live with but do cuddle with. To make it a bit less cozy again, it of course has everything to do with infecting and that one and a half meters, but we won't do that this time. A knuffelcontact is promising. You also know that it's going to be nice, provided you like cuddling, which I assume you do if you have a knuffelcontact. The word just feels a bit warm by itself. Who actually doesn't want a knuffelcontact, you might wonder by now. Knuffelcontacten make life more fun. I'm even advocating for a verb now. I knuffelcontact, you knuffelcontact, we knuffelcontacten.
Of course, there is much more epidemiological jargon that pops up in the sixteenth edition of the dictionary, such as: anderhalvemetersamenleving (tip for Scrabble), coronaveilig, Covid (seems logical), superverspreider, testsamenleving, and of course viruswappie. Never thought we would need that last one so often and extensively, but the Dikke van Dale is after all a reflection of society.
Extra fun: Van Dale keeps all words, so nothing has been removed. Therefore, you simply have more words to express yourself. I find that very handy.
