"Hallucinate" is the Netherlands' Word of the Year 2025

The results are in, and “hallucineren” (hallucinate) has been named the Dutch Word of the Year for 2025. For the second year in a row, the word was chosen by a panel, rather than a public vote. 

“Hallucineren” is Word of the Year 2025

The editors of the Dikke van Dale dictionary chose “hallucineren” as this year’s Word of the Year, writing that the already-established word had taken on a new meaning this year “thanks to the widespread adoption of AI applications, such as ChatGPT and Gemini” and therefore “reflects an important development in society and in language”. 

Generative AIs are said to hallucinate when they generate false, nonsensical or misleading information, but present it so it sounds factual and convincing. Van Dale defined “hallucinate” as: “[to] provide information that is not based on (reliable) data and is therefore inaccurate or completely wrong”. 

Van Dale editors chose word, skipping public vote

2025 is the second year in a row that Van Dale’s editors have chosen the Word of the Year themselves, rather than putting it to a public vote. This is after last year’s vote provoked outraged reactions from various campaign groups due to the shortlisting of certain contentious words, and people were urged to vote in particular ways, skewing the public vote. 

In the end, Van Dale closed the voting period early and instead - aptly - chose “polarisatie” (polarisation) as the word that represented the spirit of the year. 

That means that 2025 has no Word of the Year shortlist, but here is a list of the winners from recent years:

• 2024: polarisatie (polarisation)
• 2023: graaiflatie (greedflation)
• 2022: klimaatklever (climate sticker)
• 2021: prikspijt (vaccine regret)
• 2020: anderhalvemetersamenleving (one-and-a-half-metre society)
• 2019: boomer (boomer)