A reader observed that the word ‘wail’ is on the rise. The question is whether this is correct. First let’s look at the meaning, because it is not generally known. In fact, the person who introduced the word did not know it himself. Gezwatel means ‘babble, chatter’.
Remarkable: the Dikke van Dale mentions “added in October 2009”. This could indicate that we are dealing with a new word here. A word that is indicative of the zeitgeist, because you can safely say that the rise of social media is causing more swell than ever before.
But Van Dale also mentions the verb zwatelen – the mother of gezwatel – which appears to date from the 16th century. Oldest meaning: “soft rustle, lisp (particularly of the leaves of the trees).” Van Dale adds that this concerns ‘outdated literary language’. The other two meanings are “to talk loudly” and “to talk pompously.”
I think that is a nice transition of meaning: from softly rustling, lisping leaves, to pompous and loud talking at the same time; from literary language to everyday language.
Is the word gibberish really on the rise? And if so, did it happen to start in 2009 – the year it was recorded in Van Dale?
The answer is twofold. In literary Dutch there is a fairly constant amount of swaggering. From Adriaan Loosjes (“Excuse me for my gibberish please”, recorded in 1806) to Sophie Tak (“Adelien had said that although he occasionally broke out in incoherent swagger, he was otherwise quite pleasant company”, in 2020) .
Newspapers describe everyday reality. In their columns we see a steady advance of gibberish. A slow start at the end of the 19th century, an increase at the end of the 20th century and a corona-like peak in the first decades of the 20th century. Most recent example (and reason for the reader’s question): “The zeal for an inclusive spelling alphabet proves how much the talk about ancestry and identity normalizes” – a cup in de Volkskrant above a piece by Elma Drayer.
In 2009, the word had already been used in a head above a piece by Drayer (“Dangerous swagger, and compensated too”). It seems to me that there is a good chance that it was included in Van Dale for that reason. That piece was in Fidelity, a newspaper that is well read by the editor-in-chief of the Dikke Van Dale.
We now also see sweat more often NRC. From once in 1999 (Youp van ‘t Hek), then not for years, to five times in the period 2019-2021.
This kind of frequency increase is easy to explain: words can also be contagious. That is why our advice remains: keep enough distance, wash your glossary regularly and ventilate your opinions rather with a lisp than loud and pompous, because that is bad for everyone’s health.
#Words #contagious