(30 Nov 2025) After three days of voting in which more than 30,000 people had their say, we have chosen rage bait as our official Oxford Word of the Year for 2025.
Rage bait (n.) 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.
With 2025’s news cycle dominated by social unrest, debates about the regulation of online content, and concerns over digital wellbeing, our experts noticed that the use of rage bait this year has evolved to signal a deeper shift in how we talk about attention—both how it is given and how it is sought after—engagement, and ethics online.
The word has also increased threefold in usage in the last 12 months, according to our language data.
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. Both terms are well-established in English and date back to Middle English times. Although a close parallel to the etymologically related clickbait, rage bait has a more specific focus on evoking anger, discord, and polarization.
The emergence of rage bait as a standalone term highlights both the flexibility of the English language, where two established words can be combined to give a more specific meaning in a particular context (in this case, online) and come together to create a term that resonates with the world we live in today.
Find out more here.
