Wordle fans 'furious' at Cambridge Dictionary's Word of the Year 2022

17.11.2022 - 04:39 / dailyrecord.co.uk

The Cambridge Dictionary has announced its word of the year is "homer" - much to the anger of Wordle fans. Earlier this year, many players of the popular word game had their winning streaks ended when the unfamiliar American English word, meaning a home run in baseball, was thrown up.

It was searched for over 75,000 times during the first week in May, becoming the dictionary's highest-spiking word of the year. The vast majority of searches for homer (95 per cent) were from outside North America, as frustrated Wordle players turned to the Cambridge Dictionary to learn what it meant.

Speakers of British English said they were “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, even when they’re playing a globally popular new word game that has brought people together online for friendly competition about language.

“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. We’ve seen those two phenomena converge in the public conversations about Wordle,