The worst words of 2022

‘Homer, the poet?’ asked my husband, puzzled, as he often is. He was responding to my scornful observation that the Cambridge Dictionary had chosen homer as its word of the year for 2022. The reason was merely that it had figured as the answer to a Wordle puzzle and many people did not know what it meant, so looked it up.

The homer in question was presumed to be a home run in baseball. The poet would not qualify, being a proper name. He does however find a place in the Oxford English Dictionary under nod, since Homer nods became a proverb, taking its cue from the Ars Poetica of Horace: Indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus; ‘I feel aggrieved when sometimes even excellent Homer falls asleep.’ Pope in his Essay on Criticism suggests that we often unjustly accuse Homer and such great writers: ‘Nor is it Homer Nods, but We that Dream.