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The annual Oxford Word of the Year has been revealed, and the winner is “rage bait”. It reportedly narrowly won out against contenders such as “charisma cultivation” – a newfangled way of saying charisma, a trait for which a host of perfectly fine words already exist. The other finalist was “lifestyle optimization”, a imprecisely defined personal enhancement that implies somehow breaching the mainframe of time itself to combat the effects of aging. Given that “charisma cultivation” is superfluous and most “biohacks” are largely nonsense, the race might not have been that close after all, but the new term is a somewhat dubious choice.

Understanding the Issue of Anger Fodder

Rage bait, for the uninitiated, is the dissemination, typically online, of content deliberately crafted to incite outrage. It is far from a mythical concept; studies has long indicated that digital interaction is most strongly driven by animus against perceived others. Furthermore, it is not a harmless quirk of contemporary society, similar to specialty coffees. Instead, it creates intellectual silos, widens cultural rifts, and gradually undermines faith in established systems, as individuals become so disconnected from any group outside their own that they cease to believe anything except word of mouth. One might suggest that elevating such a term is somewhat analogous to making “forced removal” the word of the year in 1992 during the Bosnian war. Undoubtedly, people employed it often, but that didn’t make it a lighthearted linguistic milestone. Interestingly, it was declared the Un-Word of the year by a language association in Germany, which criticized its euphemistic nature. And that judgment is fair.

The Lifecycle of a Controversial Word

Given the absence of a formal right of appeal for lexical selections, we ought at least to be able to decommission words that have outlived their purpose, fundamentally shifted in definition, or caused more problems than they solved. “To mansplain” earned a spot as a New York Times Word of the Year in 2010, was a finalist for Oxford’s honor in 2015, and finally joined the Oxford English Dictionary three years later. By that time, a critical reaction was already underway. It landed on common parlance parched for a way to describe the all-too-common experience of “Why is this male acquaintance explaining my own specialization to me?” So many people, notably women, had encountered that precise scenario that the term was instantly resonant. Yet its application was broad, and it caught some individuals who were simply explaining something they did know about, and they happened to be guys. In some circles, it evolved to mean little more than “a man is talking”.

The Term in Political Semantic Drift

The term was again misappropriated, notably by the Chancellor in a pre-budget interview, to imply “some people are criticising me, and I am a woman”. This elicited a rebuttal from Kemi Badenoch, who argued on a podcast: “The Chancellor’s response has been dominated by self-victimization and complaints of sexism.” Setting aside her unnecessarily harsh language, she had a point: a top minister needs to explain their fiscal plans without crying foul of their detractors. However, Badenoch then went on to argue that the budget was unchristian, on the basis that “historical Christianity existed without government support”. This unleashed an veritable flood of what some might call historical clarifications regarding the nature of the Roman state, including one writer’s memorable question: “She claims there was no state. Who carried out the crucifixion, then?”

When Explanation Isn’t Mansplaining

Yet, because these rebuttals came from individuals who had greater expertise on Roman history than Badenoch, the fact that they were mostly male – even the fact that they were playing into a separate online trend about “frequent Roman empire thoughts” – did not constitute mansplaining. It was, fundamentally, explaining in a condescending tone of voice. The original concept, therefore, was distorted by the first politician, attacked by the opposition figure, and might have been rightly invoked by observers. However, the politician’s level of factual error was so great on that particular topic that one cannot condescendingly explain it to her – at least not about ancient Rome. The slipperiness of the term is too nebulous; no single term could adequately capture it. Or perhaps this entire analysis is just an attempt to provoke a political opponent.