The 2025 Word of the Year has officially been announced by Oxford University after 30,000 people voted over the course of three days.
The 2025 Word of the Year is “rage bait.” Rage bait is a compound of the words rage, meaning “a violent outburst of anger,” and bait, meaning “an attractive morsel of food.”
In other words, it refers to a situation where someone is having a tough day and another person intentionally annoys them for the sake of humor or to provoke a reaction.
Use of the term has seen a rapid increase over the last 12 months, according to language data from Oxford University Press (OUP).
This year’s final vote came down to three shortlisted terms: rage bait, aura farming, and biohack.
It was the “dramatic surge in usage” that helped rage bait win, said Casper Grathwohl, president of Oxford Languages.
Rage bait follows the 2024 Word of the Year, “brain rot,” which also reflects the impact of the internet on people’s emotions and cognitive abilities.
