"Stick your fork in it and see if it's done."
To stick a fork into something can have a negative meaning, along the lines of 'I don't like it, it's terrible, it's not good', or, per definition 2 of the link, 'To be completely destroyed or defeated'. Or as in The Urban Dictionary (TUD) entry 3 'Indicating a losing or lost cause'.
So, being music and song, when lines can have many meanings, it seems a play on words of both "a fork in the road" as a decision or "another turning point" and to just stick a fork in the road, because I think the situation (or my life) is terrible or even a lost cause, and/or it shows that my attitude toward the turning point in life, or all of life, is negative.
But, as always, poetry and song lyrics are open to multiple interpretations, some of which may be unintended or even unknown to the writer(s).
"Hit home" or "hit home on" is an idiom. Its original or basic meaning is "to strike the intended target" as of an arrow or other projectile. But it is used in several metaphoric senses. "His words hit home" means that the words had a significant effect on the listener, that the listener took them to heart. It may imply that this was the intended effect, but it need not.
In the given example:
... the question hit home on a classic example of the English language’s tendency for exceptions.
"hit home" mans that the question in a sense "landed on" the example (which no doubt the text goes on to explain). That is, that one cannot answer the question without exploring the example of an exception, because that example is central to the question.
In this instance, I think that 'hit home" is a less than optimal idiom to express the concept. But it is perfectly valid. I might have written:
... the question directly involves a classic example of the English language’s tendency for exceptions.
The OP asks: "What does the writer mean by "a classic example of the English language’s tendency for exceptions?"
English grammar is notorious for being more a collection of exception than a collection of rules. Few absolute rules exist for English usage to which some exception cannot be found. This is partly due to the changes from Old English to Middle English, and then from Middle to Modern English, which were not made with complete consistency. It is partly due to the tendency of English to appropriate vocabulary, sometimes with accompanying grammatical patterns, from other languages. It is partly due to people who have invented and popularized a number of "rules" for English which are nothing of the sort; which do not and never did reflect actual English usage. (Some of these were based on the assumption that the rules of Latin grammar must also apply to English.) And partly it is just the way English usage has developed.
The quoted expression is referring to this tendency. "tendency for exceptions" might better have been expressed as "tendency to generate exceptions" o0r perhaps as "profusion of exceptions". But then Quora answers are often composed on-the-fly, and may not consist of well-polished prose. (Speaking as one who has posted a good many Quora answers.)
In short "a classic example of the English language’s tendency for exceptions?" means simply a classic example, like many others, of an exception to the widely known rules of English Grammar and usage.
Best Answer
To bend over is to lean down from the waist, to whatever degree, usually by choice to pick something up. It is pretty much equivalent to bend down. This is the best picture I could find online (ignore the big red "not" sign, I think it's trying to instruct people not to lift heavy things that way, and it's not the point; I just couldn't find a better picture).
The addition of double is describing to what extent the searchers are bending over. To bend over double is to bend over so far that you bend to about your halfway point (bend in half, bend over double). Like this:
(Except the wind is doing this to them, and the girl in the picture is using her arms and doing it on purpose for yoga or something.)
So now we understand what to bend over double means. But to add to your semantic confusion, in your example sentence the people aren't intentionally bending over double on purpose; the wind is doing it to them. If they were doing it intentionally, you'd have something like this:
But since the wind is doing it to them, you get the construction in your example:
So the winds were strong enough that they forcibly made the searchers bend over double.