Spelling and grammar

Spelling & Dutch Word List (‘Groene Boekje’)

The Dutch Language Institute is an authority in the field of spelling. Since 1995, the institute (then: Institute for Dutch Lexicology) has been compiling the ‘Word List of the Dutch Language’ for the Dutch Language Union: an overview of the official spelling of Dutch words. In its printed form, the Word List is better known as het Groene Boekje (‘the green book’). The most recent edition was released in 2005.

Woordenlijst.org

The Word List of the Dutch Language is online available for free at woordenlijst.org. In 2015, the online version grew from approximately 100,000 entries to roughly 168,000 entries. All words from the previous printed edition have been retained.

The newly added words are derived from text files collected at the Dutch Language Institute, containing newspaper texts, literary texts and texts from the internet. In addition, a selection was made from all words that had been looked up in vain in the online Word List.

Since 2015, woordenlijst.org has been updated several times a year with hundreds of new words. At the end of 2019 it contained a total of 186,000 words. With all plural forms, diminutive forms, past tenses and past participles, the digital version of the Word List now contains information about approximately 680,000 word forms.