Oxford University Press has picked rage bait as its 2025 word of the year, saying the phrase has become one of the most common ways people describe manipulative online posts.
The publisher said the use of the term has risen sharply in the past year as more social media users complain about content created to stir anger. According to Oxford University Press, rage bait refers to online posts made to trigger outrage by being annoying, offensive, or provocative.
Explaining the pick, the president of Oxford Languages, Casper Grathwohl, said the sharp rise in its use shows a wider change in how people react to online content.
He said, “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 added that online platforms have shifted from only trying to spark curiosity to playing directly on people’s emotions. “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,” he said.
Rage bait was selected ahead of two other shortlisted expressions, aura farming and biohack, after public voting helped guide a final review by language experts.
Oxford explains aura farming as creating an attractive or confident public image, often in a subtle way, while biohack covers efforts to boost physical or mental performance through diet, lifestyle, supplements, or technology.
Grathwohl said this year’s choice follows last year’s winning term, brain rot, which described the mental fatigue linked to endless scrolling on apps like TikTok. “Together, they form a powerful cycle where outrage sparks engagement, algorithms amplify it, and constant exposure leaves us mentally exhausted,” he said.
Past Oxford words of the year include selfie, goblin mode and rizz.
Other dictionary publishers also released their 2025 choices. Cambridge Dictionary selected parasocial, which it defined as a one-sided bond formed by fans towards celebrities they do not know. Collins Dictionary announced vibe coding as its top pick, describing it as building an app or website by speaking instructions to artificial intelligence instead of writing the code manually.
