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LONDON (AP) — Oxford University Press has named “rage bait’’ as its word of the year, capturing the internet zeitgeist of 2025.

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The phrase refers to online content that is “deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative or offensive,” with the aim of driving traffic to a particular social media account, Oxford said in a statement.

“The person producing it will bask in the millions, quite often, of comments and shares and even likes sometimes,’’ lexicographer Susie Dent told the BBC. This is a result of the algorithms used by social media companies, “because although we love fluffy cats, we’ll appreciate that we tend to engage more with negative content and content that really provokes us.”

Rage bait topped two other contenders — “aura farming’’ and “biohack’’ — after public comment on a shortlist compiled by lexicographers at Oxford University Press.

“Aura farming’’ means to cultivate a public image by presenting oneself in “a way intended subtly to convey an air of confidence, coolness or mystique.’’ “Biohack’’ is defined as “an attempt to improve or optimize one’s physical or mental performance, health or longevity.’’

The word of the year is selected by lexicographers at Oxford University Press who analyze new and emerging words, as well as changes in the way language is being used, to identify words of “cultural significance.”

Oxford University Press, publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary, has selected a word of the year annually since 2004.

Past winners include “podcast” in 2005, “emoji” in 2015, and in 2022 “goblin mode,” which described people who resisted returning to normal life after the COVID-19 pandemic.

By STAN CHOE, Associated Press Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are giving back some of last week’s rally on Monday, as bitcoin, Nvidia and other former stars of Wall Street fall again.

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The S&P 500 slipped 0.6% and was on track to break a five-day winning streak. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 267 points, or 0.6%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.8% lower.

Last week’s rally was largely due to strengthening hopes that the Federal Reserve will cut its main interest rate at its meeting next week to help shore up the slowing job market. Such hopes are still high, with traders betting on a roughly 87% chance of it, according to data from CME Group.

But yields for longer-term Treasurys nevertheless rose in the bond market on Monday. It was part of a worldwide climb for bond yields after the head of the Bank of Japan hinted at a possible hike to interest rates there.

When bonds are paying higher yields, they can attract investors who would otherwise buy stocks, cryptocurrencies or other investments. Higher bond yields can undercut prices for all kinds of investments, and they particularly hurt those seen as the most expensive.

Bitcoin, which was soaring around $125,000 in October, dropped below $86,000. That’s down roughly 5% from a day earlier.

That sent stocks lower across the crypto industry. Coinbase Global sank 4.8%, and Robinhood Markets fell 4.5%, for example. Strategy, the company that used to be known as MicroStrategy and now raises money just to buy bitcoin, dropped 6.9%.

Other former high flyers on Wall Street also struggled, including stocks caught up in the frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology.

Nvidia, which has grown to become Wall Street’s most influential stocks, slipped 0.6% and was one of the heaviest weights on the market. Palantir Technologies fell 2.3%, and Super Micro Computer sank 3%.

The market seemed to get relatively little solace from an apparently strong start to the holiday shopping season. Consumer spending during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday retailing bonanza was expected to exceed expectations, despite uncertainty over the outlook for the U.S. economy.

Among the few winners on Wall Street was Synposys, which rose 4.6%. It said Nvidia is investing $2 billion in its stock as part of an expanded partnership between the two.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed amid some sharp moves.

France’s CAC 40 fell 0.5%, dragged down in part by a 5.1% loss for Airbus. The European aerospace giant said Monday that most of its fleet of 6,000 A320 passenger jets have received an update after a weekend software glitch that could have affected flight controls. Travelers faced minor disruptions heading into the weekend as airlines around the world scrambled to push the software updates out after Airbus warned of the problem Friday, one of the busiest travel days of the year.

In Japan, the Nikkei 225 tumbled 1.9% on worries about the possibility of higher interest rates. Japan’s benchmark interest rate has remained near zero for years in hopes of juicing the economy. Now inflation is holding above the Bank of Japan’s target of about 2%.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.08% from 4.02% Friday.

AP Business Writer Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.

By MIKE CATALINI, Associated Press

President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Alina Habba, whom the administration has maneuvered to keep in place as New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor, is disqualified from serving in the role, an appeal court said Monday.

A panel of judges from the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sitting in Philadelphia sided with a lower court judge’s ruling after hearing oral arguments at which Habba herself was present on Oct. 20.

“It is apparent that the current administration has been frustrated by some of the legal and political barriers to getting its appointees in place. Its efforts to elevate its preferred candidate for U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, Alina Habba, to the role of Acting U.S. Attorney demonstrate the difficulties it has faced — yet the citizens of New Jersey and the loyal employees in the U.S. Attorney’s Office deserve some clarity and stability,” the court wrote in a 32-page opinion.

It concluded: “We will affirm the District Court’s disqualification order.”

The ruling comes amid the push by President Donald Trump’s Republican administration to keep Habba as the acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey, a powerful post charged with enforcing federal criminal and civil law. It also comes after the judges questioned the government’s moves to keep Habba in place after her interim appointment expired and without her getting Senate confirmation.

Habba said after that hearing in a statement posted to X that she was fighting on behalf of other candidates to be federal prosecutors who have been denied a chance for a Senate hearing.

Messages were left Monday seeking comment from the U.S. attorney’s office in New Jersey, Habba’s personal staffer and the Justice Department.

Habba is hardly the only Trump administration prosecutor whose appointment has been challenged by defense lawyers.

Last week, a federal judge dismissed criminal cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James after concluding that the hastily installed prosecutor who filed the charges, Lindsey Halligan, was unlawfully appointed to the position of interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. The Justice Department has said it intends to appeal the rulings.

The judges on the panel were two appointed by Republican President George W. Bush, D. Brooks Smith and D. Michael Fisher, as well as one named by Democratic President Barack Obama, Luis Felipe Restrepo.

A lower court judge said in August Habba’s appointment was done with a “novel series of legal and personnel moves” and that she was not lawfully serving as U.S attorney for New Jersey.

That order said her actions since July could be invalidated, but he stayed the order pending appeal.

The government argued Habba is validly serving in the role under a federal statute allowing the first assistant attorney, a post she was appointed to by the Trump administration.

A similar dynamic is playing out in Nevada, where a federal judge disqualified the Trump administration’s pick to be U.S. attorney there.

The Habba case comes after several people charged with federal crimes in New Jersey challenged the legality of Habba’s tenure. They sought to block the charges, arguing she didn’t have the authority to prosecute their cases after her 120-day term as interim U.S. attorney expired.

Habba was Trump’s attorney in criminal and civil proceedings before he was elected to a second term. She served as a White House adviser briefly before Trump named her as a federal prosecutor in March.

Shortly after her appointment, she said in an interview with a right-wing influence that she hoped to help “turn New Jersey red,” a rare overt political expression from a prosecutor.

She then brought a trespassing charge, eventually dropped, against Democratic Newark Mayor Ras Baraka stemming from his visit to a federal immigration detention center.

Habba later charged Democratic U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver with assault stemming from the same incident, a rare federal criminal case against a sitting member of Congress other than for corruption. McIver denied the charges and pleaded not guilty. The case is pending.

Questions about whether Habba would continue in the job arose in July when her temporary appointment was ending and it became clear New Jersey’s two Democratic U.S. senators, Cory Booker and Andy Kim, would not back her appointment.

Earlier this year as her appointment was expiring, federal judges in New Jersey exercised their power under the law to replace Habba with a career prosecutor who had served as her second-in-command.

Bondi then fired the prosecutor installed by the judges and renamed Habba as acting U.S. attorney. The Justice Department said the judges acted prematurely and said Trump had the authority to appoint his preferred candidate to enforce federal laws in the state.

Brann’s ruling said the president’s appointments are still subject to the time limits and power-sharing rules laid out in federal law.

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