A Dictionary of Dutchness

HWN'er

Liberal VVD party leader Mark Rutte came up with this term during the parliamentary debate on the 2008 budget. A HWN’er or hardwerkende Nederlander (hard-working Dutch person) is someone who gets up at 7am, works all day, gets stuck in traffic on his or her way home and arrives just in time to put the kids to bed. Suddenly, all the parties embraced the term to describe the ‘victims’ of the government’s spending plans.