Search for worst English word abandoned after flood of offensive suggestions

'Religiously offensive vocabulary' has been submitted, say organisers Oxford Dictionaries

The publishers of the Oxford Dictionaries launched the lighthearted quest on 25 August (Rex)

The search to find Britain's least-liked word has been abandoned after the organisers received a flood of offensive and insulting suggestions.

After an initially promising search that ranked "moist", "Brexit" and "hello" as the worst words in the English language according to an international public, the call for lexical recommendations went sour.

Oxford Dictionaries, the dictionary publisher that organised the quiz, said it removed the feature "due to severe misuse".

"We regret to inform users that due to severe misuse we have had to remove this feature from our website," said a message on the site.

Users around the globe were invited to name their least-preferred English word in the dictionary, with "moist" taking crown position in the UK, US and Australia when the quiz was first launched on 25 August.

"Brexit" and "British" topped the UK list by the second day, apparently revealing an ongoing annoyance at the EU referendum result among some respondents.

But barely 48 hours after the #OneWordMap feature was created, highly offensive words began to flood in which rendered the light-hearted word quest unworkable.

The suggestions were "a mixture of swearwords and religiously offensive" vocabulary, said Oxford Dictionaries, according to The Guardian.

Although the publisher would not reveal what these were, several people tweeted "Israel" below its social media announcement of the project.

And other Twitter users suggested "Islam" had also been repeatedly submitted.

The case is reminiscent of a similar quest for words from the public that prompted organisers to dismiss the result — although a less disturbing example.

When the National Environment Research Council (NERC) asked Britons to name a £200 million polar research ship, they opted for "Boaty McBoatface" by an overwhelming majority of more than 120,000 votes.

About 11,000 voted for "RRS Sir David Attenborough", which the NERC eventually decided to call their ship. Other entries included "RRS It's bloody cold here" and "RRS What Iceberg".

There are at least 250,000 distinct English words, excluding regional and technical vocabulary, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. About 20 per cent are now obsolete, leaving some 171,476 English words that are spoken or written today.