This word has been chosen as the Food Word of the Year 2024
Dropsnop, chocogurk, gemakballen or nougaterie? Plaspatat, preppen, sloopmelk or sobercoach? Vetvijver, vleesvelden, voorspeldel or worstengrootje? No, none of these words made it. Solohap has been chosen as the Food Word of the Year 2024.
Solohap was one of the nominated words on the Food Word list. This is not a culinary word list featuring ingredients and dishes that are new to Dutch dining tables and kitchens. The food word does not necessarily have to be widely used, but it must be apt, funny and witty. Above all, the word should preferably express something of the culinary zeitgeist of the year in question. An additional advantage is that it is a relatively new word or newly coined concept.
Solohap: word that best captures the zeitgeist
Food writer Ubel Zuiderveld of organiser Ubelski.nl explains why solohap was chosen as Food Word of the Year 2024: “The word solohap fits the culinary zeitgeist well. Research agencies and experts point out that more and more people in our country are eating alone. Simply because the number of one-person households continues to grow sharply. But also because members of households eat at different times or because they follow a completely personalised diet.”
When and how did this word emerge? Culinary journalist Jacques Hermus wrote in the Leeuwarder Courant, Dagblad van het Noorden (31 October 2024) about new cookbooks for Cookbook Week, including The Cookbook of the Netherlands. The headline above the article: “From extravagant meals to solo bites.” Hermus’s colleague Gerrit Jan Groothedde was already using solohap in 2009 in a different sense. Namely, as a dish that the person who prepared it has to eat themselves because the other family members turn up their noses at it.
More notable food words
Other nominated food words that attract attention in 2024 as relatively new concepts also have links to current culinary trends. These include words such as afvalmedicijn, kauto (the car in which drive-through meals are chewed), pistachisatie, plaspatat (fries made from potatoes fertilised with human urine), snackroosje (plant-based snacks), preppen and voedselalarm. Last year, havermelkelite was chosen as Food Word of the Year; in 2022, it was eetomgeving.
Trivial food word
A so-called trivial food word was also chosen. This year’s choice is the word fridgie. It is a variant of selfie. A fridgie is a photo of the contents of the refrigerator, so that consumers have their supplies at hand on their phone while doing their grocery shopping. Fridgie has been used in English for some time, but its use in Dutch is recent. It appeared in a column by Dolf Jansen in the daily newspaper Trouw (22 March 2024): “Recently I came across the word fridgie. It turned out to be a variant of selfie, but of your refrigerator, your fridge.”
Nominations for 2025 can be sent by email to info@ubelzuiderveld.nl until mid-December 2025
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