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Angry Wordle players searching for the meaning of ‘homer’ made it the runaway winner as Cambridge Dictionary’s word of the year.
An American term for a home run in baseball, it was searched nearly 75,000 times during the first week of May when it was the controversial answer to the online word puzzle.
Many players saw winning streaks ended by the unfamiliar word as five-letter Wordle answers dominated dictionary searches.
The US spelling of ‘humor’ was the second highest search, followed by ‘caulk’, a word used in the US to mean filling space around an edge.
Cambridge Dictionary said: ‘Five-letter words have simply taken over the look-ups.’
They all but squeezed out the topical words that normally provide the word of the year.
Angry Wordle players searching for the meaning of ‘homer’ made it the runaway winner as Cambridge Dictionary’s word of the year
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An American term for a home run in baseball, ‘homer’ was searched nearly 75,000 times during the first week of May when it was the controversial answer to the online word puzzle. Pictured: Los Angeles Dodgers right fielder Yasiel Puig hits a home run
These included ‘oligarch’ following the invasion of Ukraine and ‘vulnerable’, prompted by Britain’s cost of living crisis.
Wordle creator Josh Wardle sold his game to the New York Times in January as it became a global hit.
Wendalyn Nichols, Cambridge Dictionary publishing manager, said: ‘Wordle’s words, and the public’s reactions to them, illustrate how English speakers continue to be divided over differences between English language varieties, even when they’re playing a globally popular new word game that has brought people together online for friendly competition about language.
‘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.’
Additions to the Cambridge Dictionary this year have included ‘shrinkflation’, defined as the situation when the price of a product stays the same but its size gets smaller.
Lexicographers are considering several other new words for inclusion, with ‘digital amnesia’ among those on the list – defined as a condition where people become less able to remember things because they are used to looking everything up on the internet.
