London, UK - The Cambridge Dictionary's 2022 word of the year is "homer." Editors credit disgruntled Wordle players whose winning streaks were ended by the unfamiliar term.

Homer, the American English word for a home run in baseball, was searched for nearly 75,000 times during the first week of May when it was an answer in the online five-letter word puzzle, Wordle.

It became the dictionary's highest-spiking word of 2022. Editors said five-letter Wordle answers dominated searches this year as the game became a global phenomenon.

The vast majority of searches for "homer" were from outside North America, as frustrated Wordle players turned to the Cambridge Dictionary to learn what it meant.

British English speakers used words like "outraged" and "furious" to complain about the choice of "homer" as the Wordle answer for May 5 on social media. The American spelling of "humor" caused the second-highest spike in 2022.

In third place was "caulk," which is a word more familiar to American English speakers than British English speakers, meaning to fill the spaces around the edges of a bathtub or window frame with a special substance.

Americans, in turn, grumbled about "bloke," which appeared on Wordle on July 25.

"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," Cambridge Dictionary publishing manager Wendalyn Nichols said.

She added,"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."

Searches for Wordle's five-letter words on the Cambridge Dictionary website beat out words that reflected current affairs. Among these were "oligarch" likely triggered by Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine, and "vulnerable." The word "ableist" also spiked during the controversy over Lizzo's Grrls lyrics.

Additions to the Cambridge Dictionary this year includes the word "shrinkflation," which is when the price of a product stays the same, but the product itself gets smaller.

Lexicographers are considering adding a few more words like "digital amnesia," which is defined as a condition where people become less able to remember things because they are used to looking everything up on the internet.