Wordle woes behind Cambridge Dictionary’s word of the year

The Cambridge Dictionary has revealed its word of the year for 2022 as “homer”, with editors crediting disgruntled Wordle players whose winning streak was ended by the unfamiliar American English term.

Homer, an informal American English word for a home run in baseball, was searched for nearly 75,000 times during the first week of May when it was an answer in the online five-letter word puzzle.

It became the dictionary’s highest-spiking word of the year, and editors said fiveletter Wordle answers dominated searches this year as the game became a global phenomenon.

The vast majority of searches for homer (95 per cent) were from outside North America.

Speakers of British English used words like “outraged” and “furious” to complain on social media about the choice of “homer” as the Wordle answer for May 5.

The American spelling of “humor” caused the second highest spike in 2022.

In third place was “caulk”, a word more familiar in American English than in British English, meaning to fill the spaces around the edge of something, for example a bath or window frame, with a special substance.

Americans, in turn, grumbled about “bloke”, which appeared on Wordle on July 25.

Wendalyn Nichols, Cambridge Dictionary publishing manager, said: “Wordle’s words, and the public’s reactions to them, illustrate how English speakers continue to be divided over differences between English language varieties.

“The differences between British and American English are always of interest not just to learners of English but to English speakers globally, and word games are also perennially entertaining.”

Searches for Wordle’s fiveletter words on the Cambridge Dictionary website squeezed out other high-interest words that reflected current affairs.

These included “oligarch”, likely triggered by new international sanctions and geopolitical shifts amid Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, and “vulnerable”, which may have been prompted by inflation and the cost-of-living crisis that hit many nations worldwide.

Additions to the Cambridge Dictionary this year have included “shrinkflation”, defined as the situation when the price of a product stays the same but its size gets smaller.