Yolo, papadag nominated to be booted

Words that are too cliche, hype and politically hollow may be stricken from the vocabulary, a poll by the Institute for Dutch Lexicology INL has shown. The institute calls on respondents this week to vote away one of 10 words that have been nominated for termination, such as yolo, kids, swag, selfie and papadag (the fixed day in the week a father spends with his children).

“People are irritated by the tendency to be unnecessarily hip,” INL says. Some 800 people had responded when the institute called on people in the Netherlands and Flemings to say which words they would rather not see used in 2014.

Their reactions were used to compile the final list of 10 words: absoluut (a blah blah word), confederalisme (union, "a magical word without magic", used in Belgium), crisis (too negative), kids (too hip), papadag ("you’re a dad every day"), dagdagelijks (“daydaily”, used in Belgium. "If we use that, than why not weekweekly”?), participatiesamenleving (a community in which everybody participates), selfie ("nice word, but not Dutch"), swag ("no one really knows what it means") and YOLO.

The latter, which actually is short for you-only-live-once was nominated to be voted off because people felt it stood for indifference and for a youthful mentality where everything goes.

The list will be on INL’s website for a week; the “loser” word will be announced next week. INL said the word will not really be scrapped from the Dutch dictionaries.