The Oxford Word of the Year for 2025 has been announced as "rage bait", a term describing online content deliberately crafted to provoke anger. While the selection highlights a defining feature of our digital age, it also sparks a broader conversation about the lifecycle of words themselves. Specifically, when should we retire terms that have outlived their usefulness or caused more division than clarity?
The Slippery Slope from Useful Neologism to Blunt Instrument
One prime candidate for decommissioning, according to Guardian columnist Zoe Williams, is "mansplain". The word entered the cultural lexicon to fill a very specific gap: describing the infuriating experience where a man condescendingly explains something to a woman, often on a topic she is expert in. It resonated widely, becoming the New York Times Word of the Year in 2010, an Oxford WOTY runner-up in 2015, and earning a formal entry in the Oxford English Dictionary by 2018.
However, its very popularity led to mission creep. The term's net widened, at times being used to dismiss any instance of "a man talking", diluting its original, precise meaning. This dilution has transformed it from a sharp tool of social critique into a potential bludgeon for shutting down debate, especially when deployed in the political arena.
A Political Flashpoint: Reeves, Badenoch and the Budget
The word's problematic evolution was recently illustrated in a pre-budget exchange. Chancellor Rachel Reeves appeared to repurpose the term, using it to deflect criticism of her economic plans by implying misogyny and mansplaining were at play. This prompted a sharp retort from Opposition Leader Kemi Badenoch, who accused Reeves of "wallowing in self-pity and whining about misogyny and mansplaining." Badenoch argued that a Chancellor must defend their decisions on merit alone.
The debate took a bizarre turn when Badenoch claimed the budget was "unchristian" because early Christian times had "no state or welfare." This triggered a wave of corrections from historians and commentators, many of them men, pointing out the extensive nature of the Roman state. While this was widely seen as condescending correction, Williams argues it wasn't true "mansplaining"—the critics simply knew more about the subject. The episode highlighted how the term has become a slidey relativistic tool, impossible to apply consistently.
The Core Problem: When Words Lose Their Meaning
The fundamental issue with "mansplain" now is its blurred definition. What began as a specific descriptor for a common, frustrating dynamic in gender relations has morphed into a catch-all retort. When a word can be simultaneously used by a Chancellor to deflect policy criticism, attacked by an Opposition Leader, and rendered meaningless in the face of genuine factual correction, its utility is severely compromised.
Williams suggests that, much like "rage bait" describes a corrosive modern phenomenon we must navigate, we should also be able to recognise when older words have become part of the problem. The case of "mansplain" demonstrates how a valuable linguistic innovation can, through overuse and misuse, become a source of further conflict and misunderstanding, losing the very precision that made it powerful in the first place.
