Cambridge Dictionary announced ‘Homer’ as Word of the Year 2022

Cambridge Dictionary

The Cambridge Dictionary has revealed its word of the year for 2022 as “homer”, saying that it was inspired by the global word game sensation, Wordle. The word ”homer” was searched for nearly 75,000 times during the first week of May 2022, when it was an answer in the word game Wordle. In the context of the game, ”homer” doesn’t refer to the Greek poet and author, or a character from Simpson, but refers to an informal American English word for a ‘home run’ in baseball.

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According to Cambridge, homer saw over 65,000 searches occurring in a single day on the dictionary website in 2022. Homer was the Wordle word of the day on May 5 this year, and this significant surge of searches occurred on that day. The dictionary website said the same word is used very differently in British and American English.

Cambridge Dictionary also saw other five-letter words surging in search in 2022 due to the “Wordle effect”. The American spelling of “humor” caused the second-highest spike in 2022, followed by ”caulk”, ”tacit, and ”bayou”, the third, fourth, and fifth place respectively. Cambridge said that the decision to choose this word was influenced by the famous game ‘Wordle’.

About the Wordle game:

Wordle is a free online game that gives users a new word puzzle each day. It gives players six chances to guess a randomly selected five-letter word. The brainchild behind the game is Brooklyn-based software engineer Josh Wardle who created Wordle for free in October 2021 as a unique gift for his girlfriend Palak Shah. It was later acquired by The New York Times.

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