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.’

I have my anti-list of the Worst Words of the Year: those that would cheer me by being expunged from the language. Here is the top ten.

10. Released. Books are published, prisoners released. The change came when books began to be spoken of like records.

9. Authored. Another indignity for books, which are, we all should know, written. ‘This usage has been objected to by some commentators,’ remarks the OED by way of conversation. Include me in this. Do the people who say author think that writing implies merely taking dictation, copying out or using a pen? Another objectionable school says pen as a piece of elegant variation for write.

8. Run. In America they run for election, even in old age. In British English we stand, though we do not necessarily deliver. I think I have lost on this one, but I still resent journalists misusing the term, as they should know better.