US Edition'Rage bait' named Oxford word of the year 2025
Oxford names 'rage bait' for its surge in use, highlighting concerns about social media algorithms and online outrage manipulation, with usage tripling in 2025.
- Oxford University Press named the phrase rage bait as its Word of the Year, reflecting recent language trends and mirroring moods that shaped public discourse over the past year.
- Over the past year, usage of rage bait spiked threefold, as Oxford defined it as online content designed to provoke anger and boost traffic.
- After a public vote that involved more than 30,000 people, Oxford assembled a shortlist and combined the vote with conversation and data, with entries personified by Uncommon.
- Oxford framed the choice as highlighting growing public awareness of manipulative online tactics and encouraging reflection, Casper Grathwohl, president of Oxford Languages, said.
- Oxford's method relies on Oxford's corpus of some 30 billion words and follows past Oxford winners like selfie, goblin mode, and rizz alongside Cambridge Dictionary and Collins Dictionary picks.
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58 Articles
"Rage bait" has been named the word of the year in the English language by Oxford University Press.
Oxford’s Word of the Year 2025 is utterly infuriating
You know that feeling when you read something online and it seems deliberately provocative, almost manufactured to create outrage? You may have just encountered “rage bait” – content deliberately designed to elicit anger in order to increase engagement.
Oxford University Press, which publishes the Oxford Dictionary, has named the phrase "anger bait" as its word of the year.
'Rage bait' named Oxford University Press word of year: What does it mean?
Oxford University Press has named “rage bait” as its word of the year, a choice that captures the internet zeitgeist of 2025. The phrase refers to online content that is “deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative or offensive,” with the aim of driving traffic to a particular social media account, Oxford said in a statement. “The person producing it will bask in the millions, quite often, of comments and s…
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