“Homer” was chosen by the Cambridge Dictionary as the word of the year for 2022, citing Wordle as its source of inspiration. When the word “homer” was a response in the word game Wordle, it was searched almost 75,000 times during the first week of May 2022.
The term “homer” in the context of the game does not allude to the Greek poet and author or a Simpsons character, but rather to an informal American English term for a baseball “home run.”
Homer was the word, which is only known to Americans
On May 5, a lot of people expressed their annoyance at losing their winning streak due to an “unfair” word. Homer was the term, which is only known to Americans. On social media, non-Americans bemoaned their inability to guess the obscure English term and rushed to the dictionary to look up its definition. The term experienced a surge in searches, making it the word with the highest increase in the Cambridge dictionary.
”When homer was the answer for May 5, speakers of American English immediately recognized it as an informal word for a home run in baseball. However, many players outside the US had not heard this word before. Huge numbers of players expressed their frustration and annoyance on social media, but many also turned to the Cambridge Dictionary to find out more,” the dictionary stated in its blog.
Homer was chosen as the Word of the Year 2022 because it “represented not just the delight that so many of our users have discovered in being playful with language but also the challenges of learning English in an increasingly connected world,” according to the dictionary team. The “Wordle effect” also caused additional five-letter terms to rise in search volume in 2022, according to Cambridge Dictionary. The second-highest spike in 2022 was caused by the American spelling of “humor,” which was followed by “caulk,” “tacit,” and “bayou,” which took the third, fourth, and fifth spots, respectively.
The differences between British and American English are always of interest
Wendalyn Nichols, Cambridge Dictionary publishing manager, said: ”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, and the way five-letter words have simply taken over the lookups on the Cambridge Dictionary website.”
Users of the free online game Wordle receive a brand-new word puzzle each day. Players are given six chances to correctly guess a five-letter word that is chosen at random. Josh Wardle, a software engineer from Brooklyn, is the creator of the game. He gave Wordle away as a special gift to his girlfriend Palak Shah in October 2021. Later, The New York Times bought it.