The Cambridge Dictionary has selected homer as the 2022 Word Of The Year (WOTY). Nothing new about this word in the United States, where it has been a winner, at least since the dawn of baseball.
A homer is a home run, originally in baseball, one of America’s favorite sports. Indeed, a homer is scored when the batter is able to hit the ball with such force that s/he is able to run through all the bases to home base, in a single bat. When all the bases are loaded with previous players, a homer also scores points for each player, moving to home base. The YouTube video below shows Aaron Judge's 62nd home run, on Oct. 4, 2022. A homer, marking a record-breaking streak for any single player, in a single-season of American League professional baseball.
What is extraordinary about the selection of homer (not Homer, the Greek) as WOTY in 2022, is that searches for the word homer, at the online Cambridge Dictionary website, were reported to have spiked to 65,000, in a single day, on May 4th, when homer was wordle in the free, Internet word-guessing game, called Wordle®. An increase in searches that made homer the 2022 WOTY, in part because Cambridge Dictionary selects WOTTIES based on the qualitative and quantitative observation of terms searched online at the dictionary’s website, and in part because the American-English term homer threw so many British-English speakers into search mode.
However, you might also be wondering, what is Wordle®? Alternatively, why isn’t wordle, or the verb to wordle, the 2022 WOTY? After all, Wordle® is a word-guessing game that has taken over the Internet, even prompting the New York Times to purchase the online game for a low-seven figure. (Cunningham, 1-30-2022).
Briefly, in response to the first question about the Wordle® game: Josh Wardle’s Wordle®, is a cross between crossword puzzle and the Wheel of Fortune. An empty grid of 5 by 6 squares enables players to guess the 5-letter wordle of the day, in six attempts. The only clues provided are also the instructions, included below:
To answer the second question about the term wordle (noun or verb) not making the 2022 WOTY cut, the reason is probably that too few people queried the Cambridge Dictionary for the term wordle, preventing the word from even becoming a 2022 WOTY candidate. In fact, all of the searches that spiked for 2022 WOTY candidates were apparently other five-letter wordles. Wordles such as bayou, tacit, caulk and humor, with American-English spelling reported to have driven some of the searches, together with a bit of British-English speaker annoyance for getting stumped. Conversely, searches for the wordle bloke, the British-English equivalent of fellow in American-English, were also reported to have spiked, the wordle bloke, this time having vexed folks from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
References
Cunningham, A. (1-31-2022) NYTimes spends low seven figure to by Wordle. NY Times
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/01/whats-a-five-letter-word-for-acquire-nyt-buys-wordle-for-low-7-figures/
The Cambridge Dictionary Word of the Year 2022
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/editorial/woty
Rosenberg, A. (Oct. 3, 2022). What’s Wordle? Here’s everything you need to know.
https://mashable.com/article/wordle-word-game-what-is-it-explained (since Oct, 2021 – John Wardle – inventor)
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