Aso

Noun: an Anti-social person, a douchebag, an asshole.

In Dutch, "Aso" is a contraction of "asociaal", which means antisocial. This is not quite an accurate translation, however, as an antisocial person in English usually refers to nerds, geeks, loners and recluses. They are people who lack social skills. This is not quite accurate, as an anti social person would actually have negative social skills. That's where "aso" comes in.

My auntie once lovingly described Holland as a 'small rot land', referring to how close everybody lives to each other. Holland is technically ranked 28th in the world in terms of population density, at just over 400 people per square kilometer. However, a closer look at the rankings shows that Holland is actually the 2nd real country on the list. The only real country above Holland is South Korea, ranked 22, and all the rest are either tiny island nations, or simply rich cities that have their own governments, like Malta, Singapore and the Vatican. (I would have included Taiwan, but I don't want to piss off the Chinese government and recognise Taiwan as a separate nation and risk having hundreds of probably paid protestors outside my window.)

The point is, Holland is a country with many people sharing limited space. This makes social skills especially important.

This also makes it much easier to spot aso behaviour. This may include talking loudly, littering, careless driving, not giving up a seat to an elderly pregnant child with a broken leg, vandalism e.t.c. However, Aso also refers to a certain demographic which are often synonymous to bogans, punks, goths, emo's, hicks, white-trash and people from Den Haag.

In fact, Den Haag has a football club called Den Haag Ado, and they are famous for having the worst hooligan fans in Holland - even more so than Feyenoord and Ajax. Their club is usually at the bottom-middle of the table, but at least their hooligans are right at the top of their game.

Basically, when you say aso, you pretty much mean "asshole", butsaying aso allows you to pull back on the swears without pulling your punches. And nothing could possibly be more gazelle-ish than punching an aso.


Example Sentences:

1. A: "Not all Den Haag supporters are asos.
B: "They are so."

2. "Look at that guy mooning us. What an aso."