Wow! Wordle gave Cambridge Dictionary its Word of the Year 2022

Wordle has been the craze of 2022 among netizens and so far, it has led to creation of several communities and spin-off games. It is only normal then to see Wordle giving the Cambridge Dictionary the word of the year 2022. Yes, the word of the year for the Cambridge Dictionary comes from the Wordle Word of the day sometime in May 2022. The word was searched a lot and it caused players to be enraged on why such a word was chosen as the word of the day at the time.

Now, the word that made Wordle players called unfair at the time is going up on the online dictionary as the word of the year 2022. The word is called Homer and is essentially an American English word of the informal nature. Simply put, Homer is an informal way to refer to a home run in basketball in the US. The word is highly unfamiliar with the people outside the US and made them very angry. After all, those who didn’t get the word had their winning streak end with this Wordle word of the day.

Wordle controversial word is word of the year

“When we looked at our data to see which words had been searched for the most in 2022, homer immediately stood out. It was looked up more than 79,000 times this year, and an amazing 65,401 of those views happened on May 5,” says 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,” added the blog.

Additionally, the Cambridge Dictionary team saw a spike in search for other five letter words such as humor (the American version of humour), caulk, tacit, and bayou. The word homer, however, “represented not only the enjoyment that so many of our users have found in being playful with language, but also the challenges of learning English in an increasingly connected world.”