The Cambridge Dictionary’s word of the year for 2022 was inspired by the global word game sensation, Wordle, the free online game that gives users a new word puzzle each day.

The word for this year as picked by Cambridge Dictionary is “homer,” which was searched nearly 75,000 times during the first week of May 2022. It was around the same time when the word was featured as an answer in the word game Wordle.

The word was the cause of a lot of people’s frustration on May 5, when a lot of them were unable to guess the unfamiliar American word and as a result, lost their winning streak, owing to what they branded as an ‘unfair’ word. 

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‘Homer’ did not refer to the Greek poet and author, or a character from Simpson. In the context of the game, it referred to informal American English, which means ‘home run’ in baseball. This made it harder for non-Americans to guess the word correctly. Frustrated players rushed to the dictionary to search for its meaning. This led it to become the Cambridge dictionary’s highest-spiking word.

“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.

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There was also seen a surge in the search for five-letter words in 2022 due to the “Wordle effect”. For example, the American spelling of “humor” caused the second-highest spike in 2022. 

  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.”