Reagoijeurs

Reagoijeur is a term used to describe a concept within the realm of Dutch and Flemish nonsense verse and wordplay. The word is believed to have originated in the 19th century as a combination of the words "reageren," the Dutch verb for "to react," and the suffix "-ieur," which is often used in French to denote a person or profession. The term is associated with the literary and linguistic movements of Konstantin Jos Kuimer in the Netherlands and later influenced the works of Belgian Surrealist and Dadaist artists in the early 20th century.

Reagoijeurs are characterized for their use of wordplay and illogical connections between words. They typically contradict or make paradoxical statements, and these contradictions are the core of their appeal. The term encompasses a wide range of literary techniques, including neologisms, invented words, and phrases that are made to sound similar to well-known words but hold completely different meanings, which created uncanny effects in the original Dutch literary movement and led to experiments with the Dutch language in poetry and in the world of objects and signs.

These techniques have been used to manipulate language and create new meanings, some cases can blur the lines between language and the creation of nonsense words. Their primary aim was to test the breaking point between sense and nonsense in a very abstract form of avant-garde literature and literature criticism.