Seems GP got somewhere confused as well. From `man nano`:

       Since  version  8.0,  to  be  newcomer  friendly, ^F starts a forward
       search, ^B starts a backward search, M-F searches the next occurrence
       forward, and M-B searches the next occurrence backward.  If you  want
       those keystrokes to do what they did before version 8.0, add the fol‐
       lowing lines at the end of your nanorc file:

           bind ^F forward main
           bind ^B back main
           bind M-F formatter main
           bind M-B linter main

M-F/B have not defaulted to nextword/prevword, or at least haven't within the last 10y since have those binds in the earliest version of nanorc in my .config git repo.