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Oxford picks 'Rage Bait' as Word of the Year
Experts at Oxford believe that the emergence of ‘rage bait’ as a standalone term portrays the flexibility of the English language
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Rwittika Chakraborty - Tue, 02, Dec 2025
- 03:21 EST
- 14
Oxford Word of the Year 2025. / Oxfort Univerity Press
With less than a month left to bid adieu to 2025, Oxford has revealed ‘rage bait’ to be its official Word of the Year.
Oxford has defined the word ‘rage bait’ as an “online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive, typically posted in order to increase traffic to or engagement with a particular web page or social media account.”
Oxford language experts shortlisted three contenders, ‘rage bait,’ ‘aura farming,’ and ‘biohack,’ terms which have been relevant and heavily used in social media, followed by slipping into human interactions over the past year.
According to Oxford, following three days of voting from over 30,000 people, their experts chose ‘rage bait’ based on the votes, the sentiment of public commentary, and their analysis of lexical data.
Oxford further revealed that with 2025’s news cycle dominated by social unrest, debates about the regulation of online content, and concerns over digital wellbeing, their experts noticed that the use of the word has evolved and has tripled in usage in the last 12 months.
While many might point out that ‘rage bait’ includes two words, Oxford explained that the Word of the Year can be a singular word or expression, which their lexicographers consider as a single unit of meaning.
Experts at Oxford believe that the emergence of ‘rage bait’ as a standalone term portrays the flexibility of the English language, where two independent words can be combined to provide a more specific meaning in a particular context and create a term that is relevant to the current setting.
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