'Rage bait' wins Oxford's word of 2025

LONDON:

"Rage bait", the slang term describing online content designed to elicit anger and drive internet traffic, has been crowned 2025 word of the year, Oxford University Press (OUP) announced Monday.

It said the word -- chosen through a combination of public voting, sentiment and analysis of OUP's "lexical data" -- had "captured our emotions" this year.

Casper Grathwohl, president of OUP's languages division, said the growing use of such words "reveal how digital platforms are reshaping our thinking and behaviour".

"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," he added in a statement. AFP