Oxford Dictionaries' campaign to find most hated English word scrapped

London: The campaign to find the world's most hated words in the English language has been scrapped after it took a racist turn.

According to its blog, despite thousands of people taking part, Oxford Dictionaries was forced to axe its #OneWordMap initiative due to 'severe misuse,' reports the Metro.

"We regret to inform users that due to severe misuse we have had to remove this feature from our website," read the blog-post. As the survey said, 'moist' emerged as an early contender for the least popular word in the United States, while 'Brexit' was the UK's least favourite.

However, when words like ' Islam' topped the rankings in the United Kingdom, the organizers were forced to call off the #OneWordMap initiative.

For the unversed, for a global survey into people's language gripes, the dictionary publisher had invited English speakers around the world to answer a range of language-related questions under the #OneWordMap initiative, starting with the quest to find the least popular English word.

More than 8,000 people had submitted words to the poll, with differences beginning to emerge between countries.