Rage Bait and Open Compound Words

Open compound words. WTF! are they?

I had a decent NYC public elementary school education in the 50s. I learned to read. I learned to write. I learned to spell. I even learned how to diagram sentences, which gave me a feel for writing. But "open compound words?" WTF!

Reading in The New York Times, (where else?) I recently came across a Page 1, Arts section story that 'rage bait' is named the word of the year 2025. Since 2025 is still not over, I suspect the lead is so big there is no chance of absentee ballots changing the results.: Word of 2025, Rage bait.

This is not some honorific bestowed by some radio station. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) people are behind identifying "rage bait" as No. 1, beating out "biohack," and "aura farming."

To the simple minded, "rage bait" seems to be two words, written or spoken together to indicate "online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative or offensive." Something like saying the New York Jets are the best football team without a Super Bowl appearance  and victory since Richard Nixon was in his first term.

The linguists classify "rage bait" as an "open-compound" word. Looks like two words to me. Is "open-compound itself two words? No. It is a hyphenated word. Here's a wall to go climb up.

The now long departed Russell Baker would be glad to see a word still hyphenated, "open-compound," but would likely strain under a definition that "rage bait" is a single word and not just some expression, like "fuck you."

But the people at the OED track word usage, and have come away with the decision to award "rage bait" as the Word of 2025.

The NYT reporter, Jennifer Schuessler tells us the OED tracked its appearance from 2002, "when it appeared in a post on a Usenet discussion group to describe a kind of driver reaction to being flashed by another seeking to pass. Since then it has become an increasingly common slang for an attention-seeking form of online behavior."

And if "rage bait" is a word, where will you find it in the OED? My hardcover edition of the OED is two volumes, now several years old, comprehensive, but still called the "Shorter Oxford English Dictionary."

When I arrive at "rage" I get a notation that there is a "road rage" as well as "air rage." Will "rage bait" appear in the latest edition? I asked ChatGPT.

"The short answer is: we cannot know, and the OED has not yet publicly scheduled or announced an entry for rage bait."

ChatGPT then poses a question I was going to ask.

Where would if appear if the OED adds it?"

"If added, it would appear alphabetically as its own lemma:
rage-bait, n. & v."

Ah, jeeez, what's a lemma? The OED tells me: "the form of a word or phrase chosen to represent all inflectional and spellings variants in a dictionary entry, etc."

They're saying it's going in hyphenated, not as an "open compound" word.

Alert the media.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com