The word "homer" is well known in America. It's slang for home run. There are thousands hit per year in Major League Baseball.
The first was hit nearly 150 years ago by Roscoe Barnes into a line of horse carriages. Barry Bonds crushed a record 762 of them. Bryce Harper unleashed one of the more dramatic ones during this year's postseason.
But not everybody in the world knows the term.
When "homer" was a Wordle clue earlier this year, it was searched an incredible 79,000 times on the Cambridge Dictionary website. People, mostly, likely, in the U.K., thought of it as a name of a certain TV character or poet, thus making it a proper noun and unallowable as a Wordle answer. They were not happy.
Because it was searched so many times and caused such a huge uproar, Cambridge Dictionary named "homer" its Word of the Year on Thursday. The release read, in part:
“Many players outside the US had not heard this word before. Huge numbers of players expressed their frustration and annoyance on social media, but many also turned to the Cambridge Dictionary to find out more.”
It's actually proving to be perfect timing for those just becoming initiated or still uninitiated with the word. The World Baseball Classic will be coming back in March 2023, and homers will be deposited by 20 different countries across the globe. Great Britain has even qualified for the first time in its history and will hopefully be hitting a few out in Arizona. Maybe that could get some positive "homer" tweets from U.K. Twitter?
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