‘Rage bait’ named Word of the Year by Oxford University Press

Over 30,000 people voted for “Rage bait” as the Oxford University Press Word of the Year 2025, highlighting a word that has surged in use online.

The word, also known as a compound, topped a shortlist that included aura farming and biohack, and has earned its place in the Oxford English Dictionary.

The phrase is defined by Oxford as online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative or offensive, typically to increase traffic or engagement on a particular webpage or social media account.

Jonathan Dent, a Senior Editor for the Oxford English Dictionary, said: “Right from the start of the process, when we were selecting the initial shortlist of words that we offered to the public for the vote, Rage bait stood out as a really strong candidate.

“I think the great thing about language change is it’s a social negotiation between lots of different people, what words mean, and the words we keep around, and the words we’ve agreed as users are useful.”

According to the publisher’s data, usage of the term has tripled over the past year, a trend that Oxford’s language experts say reflects the evolution of online communication and content strategies in 2025.

Oxford University Press said the Word of the Year is chosen through a combination of public voting and lexical analysis of global language data.

Rage bait joins a list of recent winners that reflect societal trends, including “Brain Rot” in 2024, “Rizz” in 2023, and “Goblin Mode” in 2022.

Oxford’s choice contrasts with other lexicographers, as Cambridge Dictionary picked parasocial as its 2025 Word of the Year, while Dictionary.com selected 67, a slang term embraced by the younger generation.