Every December, Oxford University Press encapsulates the previous year with one word and crowns it word of the year. This year, the winner of that honor is not so much one word as it is two words: rage bait.
You might be familiar with rage bait if you've spent any time at all online this year, but in case you need a refresher, it's defined as "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 content."
"As technology and artificial intelligence become ever more embedded into our daily lives—from deepfake celebrities and AI-generated influencers to virtual companions and dating platforms—there’s no denying that 2025 has been a year defined by questions around who we truly are; both online and offline," Casper Grathwohl, the president of Oxford Languages said in a press release.
Rage bait won the official Oxford Word of the Year 2025 after language experts shortlisted it along with "aura farming" and "biohack." Then, more than 30,000 people voted for the winner and experts finally chose rage bait after considering the votes, general public commentary, and an analysis of lexical data.
"The fact that the word rage bait exists and has seen such a dramatic surge in usage means we’re increasingly aware of the manipulation tactics we can be drawn into online," Grathwohl said. "Before, the internet was focused on grabbing our attention by sparking curiosity in exchange for clicks, but now we’ve seen a dramatic shift to it hijacking and influencing our emotions, and how we respond. It feels like the natural progression in an ongoing conversation about what it means to be human in a tech-driven world — and the extremes of online culture."
Now you might be thinking "But wait! Rage bait is two words. Is Oxford University Press rage baiting us with the choice of 'rage bait' for Word of the Year 2025?" But you would be wrong. Word of the Year can be a single word, two words, or a whole expression as long as the expert lexicographers believe it has just a single unit of meaning.
And rage bait certainly has that single unit of meaning.
Last year's Word of the Year was brain rot. Here's to hoping 2026 contains something more hopeful.