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The prestigious Oxford Word of the Year has been announced, and the winner is “anger fodder”. It apparently narrowly won out against terms like “aura farming” – which is basically charisma, a concept for which plenty of serviceable words already exist. The other finalist was “lifestyle optimization”, a vaguely defined wellness strategy that suggests somehow breaching the system of biology itself to make some aspect of your body immune to its ravages. Given that “charisma cultivation” is superfluous and most “biological tweaks” are mostly bogus, the race perhaps wasn’t that intense after all, but the new term may not be a positive addition.

The Problem with Rage Bait

Outrage fuel, for the uninitiated, is the publication, most often online, of posts specifically designed to incite outrage. It cannot be dismissed as a mythical concept; studies has shown for some time that digital interaction is most strongly driven by out-group animosity. Furthermore, it is not a harmless quirk of contemporary society, akin to trendy beverages. Instead, it fosters echo chambers, exacerbates societal fractures, and in the end erodes confidence in reason itself, as individuals become so disconnected from any viewpoint outside their own that they dismiss anything except tribal consensus. One could argue that highlighting such a term is comparable to making “forced removal” the top lexical pick in 1992 in the midst of the conflict in the Balkans. Yes, it was used frequently, but that hardly rendered it a fun quiz answer. Incidentally, it was declared the Undesirable Word of the year by a German linguistic society, which censured its softening of a brutal reality. And that critique is understandable.

The Rise and Fall of a Controversial Word

Given the absence of a formal challenge mechanism for lexical selections, we ought at least to be able to decommission words that have outlived their purpose, irrevocably changed meaning, or created more conflict than clarity. “Mansplaining” was a New York Times Word of the Year in 2010, was a finalist for Oxford’s WOTY in 2015, and finally joined the Oxford English Dictionary three years later. By that time, a critical reaction was already in full swing. It landed on common parlance parched for a way to articulate the exasperating experience of “Why is this male acquaintance explaining my own specialization to me?” A vast number of individuals, particularly women, had encountered that precise scenario that the term was swiftly adopted. Yet its definition was loose, and it caught some individuals who were merely discussing something they did have expertise in, and they were men. In some circles, it evolved to mean little more than “a male is speaking”.

The Term in Political Debate

The term was again misappropriated, notably by Rachel Reeves in a fiscal preview, to mean “criticism I face is rooted in my gender”. This led to a comment from Kemi Badenoch, who remarked on a political program: “We've seen little but complaints about misogyny and mansplaining from the Chancellor.” Setting aside her particularly combative language, she had a point: a top minister needs to defend their policy choices without claiming unfair play of their opponents. However, Badenoch then went on to argue that the budget was not aligned with Christian values, on the basis that “the early Christian church operated without a welfare state”. This unleashed an torrent of what some might call detailed corrections regarding the realities of Roman governance, including one journalist’s memorable query: “There was no state. Who does she think crucified him, an anarchist collective?”

Context is Key

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 inadvertently referencing a separate cultural meme about “frequent Roman empire thoughts” – did not qualify as mansplaining. It was, quite simply, delivering a patronizing lesson. The intended meaning, therefore, was distorted by the first politician, attacked by the second politician, and could have been rightly invoked by the public. However, the politician’s level of factual error was so great on that particular topic that one arguably could not mansplain to her – at least not about that subject. The subjective application of the term is too unstable; no single term could hold its meaning firm. Or perhaps this entire line of reasoning is just an attempt to generate outrage from a certain figure.