KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 31 — In 2025, three major English dictionary publishers chose three different Words of the Year, but all tell the same story about life online.

Oxford University Press picked “rage bait”, content engineered to trigger anger for clicks.

The Cambridge Dictionary chose “parasocial”, the one-sided bonds people feel with celebrities, fictional characters, or even artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots.

Merriam-Webster crowned “slop”, describing the rise of low-quality digital content produced in high volume, often using AI.

All three picks point to the same 2025 anxiety: an attention economy that rewards outrage, one-sided intimacy, and low-quality output at scale, leaving audiences struggling to trust what they see online.

To see how far these terms travelled beyond dictionary pages, Garasi Bernama also reviewed Google Trends data for 2025.

Overall, global search interest for “slop” outpaced that of “rage bait” and “parasocial”, with searches for the term peaking in December. “Parasocial” generated more search interest than “rage bait” in the first half of the year, but “rage bait” pulled ahead in the second half of 2025.

Oxford’s Word of the Year: Rage bait

Oxford University Press selected “rage bait” as its Word of the Year for 2025, describing it as online content deliberately designed to provoke anger or outrage, typically to drive traffic or engagement.

Oxford’s language experts said the term reflects how platforms and creators can exploit emotional reactions, and noted that usage of the phrase has tripled over the past 12 months based on its language data.

The winner emerged from a shortlist of three after a 3-day public vote that Oxford said drew more than 30,000 participants. The two other words shortlisted were aura farming and biohack.

• Aura farming: Cultivating an impressive or charismatic public image.
• Biohack: Efforts to optimise physical or mental performance, often through lifestyle, technology, or medication and supplements.

Oxford also frames “rage bait” as a close cousin of clickbait, but with a more specific aim. Clickbait tends to lure attention through curiosity or exaggeration. “rage bait” is more specific: it aims to trigger anger and polarisation, and it thrives because many platforms reward high engagement, including negative engagement.

Google Trends search data for “rage bait” showed that interest increased from July 2025 onward. Interest peaked in the week of Nov 30 to Dec 6, 2025, which coincided with Oxford’s Dec 1, 2025 announcement naming “rage bait” its Word of the Year.

Search interest in “rage bait” was highest in the Philippines, Jamaica and Nigeria, with several Asian and African countries also appearing in the top 15. Malaysia ranked 13th among the 15 countries with the highest interest in the term in 2025.

Breakout queries related to “rage bait” point to how the term was used in different corners of the internet in 2025. Some searches appeared to be driven by Oxford’s Word of the Year announcement, including “rage bait oxford”. Others framed it in everyday relationship talk, such as “rage bait questions for bf”, while meme-related searches also surfaced, including “dog rage bait meme”.

Cambridge Dictionary’s Word of the Year: Parasocial

The Cambridge Dictionary named “parasocial” its Word of the Year for 2025, defining it as relating to a connection someone feels with a famous person they do not know, a fictional character, or an artificial intelligence.

The concept dates back to 1956, when sociologists Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl introduced the term “parasocial interaction”. It was used to describe how mass media at the time allowed audiences to develop a sense of one-sided intimacy with public figures.

While the word has circulated for decades, Cambridge said 2025 was marked by heightened attention to one-sided parasocial relationships with celebrities, influencers and AI chatbots, which helped drive interest and lookups for the term.

Notable search instances detected by Cambridge though their platform were caused by the following incidences:

• June 2025: YouTube streamer IShowSpeed blocked a fan that made a disturbing thread on a recently-ended relationship of his. The fan called herself his “number 1 parasocial”.
• July 2025: xAI rolled out a subscription tier of its Grok chatbot featuring anime-style companions, prompting criticism that the design could encourage unhealthy parasocial attachments.
• August 2025: A group of 44 US state attorneys general wrote to 13 companies behind AI chatbots, warning they could be held responsible if they failed to put in place safeguards to protect minors from harmful “chatbot parasocial relationships”.
• August 2025: Media coverage of the way fans reacted to Taylor Swift’s announcement of her engagement to Travis Kelce.

Cambridge said “parasocial” was selected alongside a wider set of internet- and AI-linked language shifts that stood out in 2025. Among the words it shortlisted were pseudonymisation and memeify.

• Pseudonymisation: A process where personal identifiers such as names or email addresses are replaced with codes or labels that do not directly reveal who the data belongs to.
• Memeify: To turn an event, image or person into a “meme” (content that spreads rapidly online, often in the form of a joke, image or short video).

Cambridge also highlighted other words and evolving meanings it tracked during the year, including:

• Glazing: Excessive praise or flattery that can sound insincere, especially by AI chatbots. It can be seen as a way to compensate for its weak responses.
• Bias: Used in K-pop fandoms to refer to the object of a fan’s “stanning” (excessive devotion).
• Vibey: To describe a place with a good atmosphere.
• Breathwork: Referring to controlled breathing techniques intended to bring physical and mental benefits.
• Doom spending: Spending money you do not have to feel better during periods of anxiety or uncertainty.

Google search interest for “parasocial” in 2025 showed increased attention paid to the term from June 2025 onwards. Searches peaked in the week of Nov 16 to Nov 22, 2025, the same week Cambridge announced on Nov 18, 2025 that “parasocial” was its Word of the Year.

Search interest in “parasocial” was highest in Singapore, Jamaica and the Philippines. Overall, North America and Asia accounted for the largest share of countries in the top 15, and Malaysia ranked 12th in 2025.

Breakout queries related to “parasocial” suggest the term circulated across languages in 2025, with people searching for its meaning in Dutch (“parasocial betekenis”), Hindi (“parasocial meaning in Hindi”), and Vietnamese (“parasocial nghĩa là gì”). Related searches also show “parasocial” turning up in music, including the query “parasocial freestyle kai angel”.

Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year: Slop

Merriam-Webster named slop its Word of the Year for 2025, pointing to a newer online sense of the word: low-quality digital content produced in large quantities, often using generative AI.

In explaining the choice, Merriam-Webster described the “flood” of AI-era slop as ranging from absurd or uncanny videos and advertising images to fake-looking news and low-quality AI-written books. It added that the term’s rise reflected growing public awareness of how much low-effort material is now circulating online.

The word also has older meanings. Merriam-Webster’s dictionary entry includes senses such as “soft mud” and food waste fed to animals, which helps explain why it has long carried a sense of something unpleasant or of little value.

Other words that stood out in Merriam-Webster’s 2025 lookup data included:

• Gerrymander: Redrawing boundaries to give a political party an unfair electoral advantage. Merriam-Webster linked its popularity to redistricting fights in the US in 2025 and notes the term comes from US politician Elbridge Gerry.
• Touch grass: A phrase telling someone to step away from the internet and re-engage with real life. Merriam-Webster said lookups surged after a public appeal that repeated the phrase in September 2025.
• Performative: Done mainly for show, to shape how others see you rather than for genuine reasons. Merriam-Webster noted rising use as social media behaviour and public gestures were increasingly labelled “performative”.
• Tariff: A tax or duty imposed by a government on imported goods (and sometimes exports). Merriam-Webster tied the spike to renewed public debate as the Trump administration began implementing promised tariffs in early 2025.
• Six seven (6 7): A Gen Alpha slang chant that is intentionally vague and often used just   for fun or to annoy adults. Merriam-Webster traced it to viral memes and a song reference.
• Conclave: The closed-door meeting where Roman Catholic cardinals gather to elect a new pope. Merriam-Webster said lookups rose due to both real-world events and interest driven by the film Conclave.
• Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg (Webster Lake): A Massachusetts lake name that jumped on Merriam-Webster’s Top Lookups list after appearing in a Roblox game spelling challenge, prompting many players to search the spelling.

In Google Trends, search interest in “slop” was relatively steady across 2025, hovering around the mid-range (about 50) for much of the year. Interest peaked in the week of Dec 14 to Dec 20, 2025, which coincided with Merriam-Webster’s Dec 14, 2025 announcement naming “slop” its Word of the Year.

(The figures reflect popularity, not the number of searches. Google uses a value of 100 to reflect the peak popularity for the term. A value of 50 means that the term is half as popular.)

Search interest in “slop” was highest in Indonesia, Denmark and Myanmar, with much of the top 15 made up of countries in Asia and Europe. Malaysia did not place in the top 15, ranking 20th in 2025.

Breakout queries related to “slop” suggest the term was showing up across a mix of online subcultures and AI-related concerns. Some searches were tied to gaming slang, including “roblox retro slop”, while others pointed to attempts to filter out low-quality AI content, such as the browser extension “slop evader”. Breakout searches also included names of AI assistants, including “meta ai” and “qwen ai”. Another term that surfaced was “slop squatting”, used to describe a potential software supply-chain risk where attackers take advantage of AI “hallucinated” package names by registering them as real, malicious packages. — Bernama

* About the data: The data collected through Google Trends is accurate as of Jan 18, 2026. Google Trends normalises search data to make comparisons between terms easier. Search results are normalised to the time and location of a query. Google Trends data reflects searches people make on Google every day, but it can also reflect irregular search activity, such as automated searches or queries that may be associated with attempts to spam Google’s search results.