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

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.