Hey, word nerds – what’s your best of the year?

Oxford University Press has named ‘rage bait’ as its 2025 Word of the Year – but what does Sunderland think?

Hannah Rooney went to find out.

This year’s Oxford Word of the Year – ‘rage bait’ – describes a tactic where internet users purposefully inspire anger in others, to drive their profile on social media.

Spark spoke to students at the University of Sunderland to find out what they would choose as their word of this year.

For many students, the choice lay in words they liked.

Liz, a Film and Media student, said: “My immediate thought was just, like, ‘glockenspiel‘ because it’s a nice word.”

A Glockenspiel – a percussion instrument similar to a xylophone. Credit: Alamy Images.

Samantha, also a Film and Media student, nominated ‘sashay‘, describing it as “slightly current” and “such a fun word”.

Popular TV Show RuPaul’s Drag Race uses the phrase “sashay away” when contestants are eliminated.

Over 30,000 people voted for Oxford University Press’s three shortlisted contenders – ‘rage bait’, ‘aurafarming’ and ‘biohack’ – which experts took into consideration as part of their decision-making process.

Arjun, a Journalism student, told Spark: “I think there’s a lot of really good words out there.”

When asked which older words should be brought back into mainstream use, he joked that ‘peng‘ – a slang word meaning attractive – should be brought back.

“On a serious note, I like the word ‘ought’. No one uses ought anymore,” Arjun said. “I’d bring that back.”

In October, Dictionary.com named the viral  ’67’,or ‘6-7’ as their Word of the Year.

Cambridge Dictionary chose ‘parasocial‘, which describes a one-sided relationship between fans and the subject of their attention, often a celebrity.

Robert, a Film and Media Student – making the same choice as Oxford in 2023 – nominated ‘rizz‘, although he described it as a “brainrot term”.

‘Brainrot’, a word describing low-quality content (often on social media), was Oxford’s Word of the Year in 2024.

This year continues the theme of words relating to the internet – which all students we spoke to felt is changing the language.

Arjun said: “I feel like the internet is a good thing for language but I feel like a lot of meanings of actual words are just altered and changed. So, like, original definitions aren’t kept any more.”

What would you choose as Word of the Year? Let us know @SparkSunderland