Oxford Dictionary Just Announced Their 2025 Word Of The Year—And Yep, That Tracks

It's that time of year when all of the "2025 wrap ups" start to come out—some carefully considered and others a slapdash attempt at penning a list of things for people to buy—but a few "best of" lists are highly anticipated each year.

For those interested in words and/or pop culture, one of the big moments is when Oxford University Press releases their Word of the Year.

This year? Rage bait.

Yes, a single expression to encapsulate both the rise of the word itself and the general feeling of engaging with news and media over the last year.

As Oxford defined it, "rage bait" refers to "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."

They explained:

"We’re not rage baiting you by choosing two words—though that would be in keeping with the meaning of the term!"

"The Oxford Word of the Year can be a singular word or expression, which our lexicographers think of as a single unit of meaning."

"Rage bait is a compound of the words 'rage,' meaning a violent outburst of anger, and 'bait,' an attractive morsel of food, on the model of the already existing clickbait."

People found that 'rage bait' was fitting, considering the political and cultural discourse that permeates many of our days.

After the general agreement, however, came some opinions.

One can only assume that as they are a dictionary, it was intentional.

Some people either missed or disagreed with the dictionary's explanation.

The whole announcement was its own rage bait (ragebait?) waiting to happen.

Finally, some folks hearkened back to a simpler time, when words like "meme" were featured.

Folks can read up on how and why this year's word was chosen, view runners up, and see recent words of the year all on the Oxford University Press website.