Gaslighting: Merriam-Webster picks its word of the year

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Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman in the 1944 US film ‘Gaslight’

When British playwright Patrick Hamilton wrote Gas Light in 1938, little did he know how often the word would be used in the 21st Century.

Merriam-Webster, America’s oldest dictionary publisher, has just chosen “gaslighting” as its word of the year. Searches on its website for the word have spiked by 1,740% in 2022, according to the company.

Gaslighting is the act or practice of grossly misleading someone, especially for one’s own advantage.

“In this age of misinformation - of ‘fake news’, conspiracy theories, Twitter trolls, and deep fakes - gaslighting has emerged as a word for our time,” Merriam-Webster said in a statement on Monday.

Gaslighting derives its origins from Hamilton’s Victorian-era play set in London about a middle-class marriage based on lies and deceit. Lead character Jack Manningham seeks to convince his wife Bella that she is going insane, including by saying she is imagining the dimming of the gas light in their home. The play was twice adapted for the screen: in the UK in 1940, then in the US in 1944. The American version, which stars Ingrid Bergman, won two Academy Awards and is preserved in the US National Film Registry as a “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” work.

But as Merriam-Webster notes, while the term referred primarily to psychological manipulation in the 20th Century, its modern use is driven by “the vast increase in channels and technologies used to mislead” people, especially in personal and political contexts.

Also on Tuesday, the company noted several other words that were among its most looked-up this year.

They are:

  • oligarch
  • omicron
  • codify
  • LGBTQIA
  • sentient
  • loamy
  • raid
  • queen consort

Interesting … :thinking:

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How apt

:105:

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I wonder who first thought of using it.I don’t like it.

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The other one is catfish

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That’s worse.

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“I” and “A” were new to me so I searched:

LGBTQIA

abbreviation

lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning (one’s sexual or gender identity), intersex, and asexual/aromantic/agender

Differences of sex development: MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia.

Intersex

Intersex is a group of conditions in which there is a discrepancy between the external genitals and the internal genitals (the testes and ovaries).

The older term for this condition is hermaphroditism. Although the older terms are still included in this article for reference, they have been replaced by most experts, patients, and families. Increasingly, this group of conditions is being called disorders of sex development (DSDs).

agender

adjective

agen·​der (ˌ)ā-ˈjen-dər

: of, relating to, or being a person who has an internal sense of being neither male nor female nor some combination of male and female : of, relating to, or being a person whose gender identity is genderless or neutral

Now I know … :+1:

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catfish

noun
cat·​fish ˈkat-ˌfish
1
: any of an order (Siluriformes) of chiefly freshwater stout-bodied scaleless bony fishes having long tactile barbels
2
: a person who sets up a false personal profile on a social networking site for fraudulent or deceptive purposes

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Thanks for that :023:

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Good grief, I can’t keep up with all these words! I might make a tag with WHF on it…:face_with_hand_over_mouth:

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No wonder that “gaslighting” is a popular search - it’s a fascinating, though appalling, topic:

Do you feel like you’re constantly walking on eggshells around someone?

Do you find yourself constantly second guessing yourself and your decisions?

You might be a victim of narcissist gaslighting. This is a type of manipulation that is often used by people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). It can make you feel like you’re going crazy and leave you feeling isolated and alone.

In this blog post, we will discuss what narcissist gaslighting is, how to recognize it, and what to do about it.

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Where did the term “catfish” come from?

Our story starts with the 2010 documentary called Catfish. In 2007, 26-year-old Nev Schulman is working as a photographer. That fall, he receives a painting of one of his photographs from an 8-year-old girl named Abby. Touched by Abby’s thoughtfulness and impressed with her artistic talent, Nev begins corresponding with her online via her mother, Angela. Nev sends Abby photographs, and Abby sends him paintings of those photos.

Nev happens to share an office space with two filmmakers (his brother Ariel Schulman and their friend Henry Joost) who begin documenting Nev and Abby’s friendship. Nev is introduced to a bunch of Abby’s friends and family members via Facebook. Eventually, he “meets” Abby’s sister, Megan, and things between the two of them quickly become very flirtatious. Nev and Megan fall in love, and the whole thing is conveniently captured on film.

Reading this with a modern eye, it’s not hard to see where the story is going. Although Nev is head-over-heels in love with Megan, he can’t deny that some of the details about her life don’t appear to add up. He decides to surprise visit her IRL at her home in Ishpeming, Mich. — and that’s when he learns the truth.

Megan doesn’t exist. She’s an online persona created by Abby’s mom, Angela … along with 14 other fake personas who have been regularly interacting with Nev for months. Even Abby herself isn’t really who Nev thought she was — she is an 8-year-old girl, but she’s never painted one of his photographs. Angela is the painter.

No one’s surprised now, but when Catfish was first released, it was something of a phenomenon. We had all grown up hearing that the people we talked to online could be totally lying about who they were, but here was a documentary showing just how far those online lies could actually be taken.

But why was the documentary — and its follow-up TV show — called Catfish ? At the end of the documentary, Angela’s husband Vince sits on the porch and shares what seems like the perfect metaphor for describing people like Angela:

They used to tank cod from Alaska all the way to China. They’d keep them in vats in the ship. By the time the codfish reached China, the flesh was mush and tasteless. So this guy came up with the idea that if you put these cods in these big vats, [and then] put some catfish in with them, then the catfish will keep the cod agile.

“And there are those people who are catfish in life, and they keep you on your toes. They keep you guessing, they keep you thinking, they keep you fresh. And I thank God for the catfish because we’d be droll, boring, and dull if we didn’t have somebody nipping at our fin.”

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Haha! Gosh, people will make up excuses for anything won’t they? :roll_eyes:

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Yes, I feel a coalition coming on.

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The Macquarie Dictionary word of the year for 2022 is far more parochial - “Teal”

n 2021, the Macquarie Dictionary Word of the Year was ‘strollout’ referring to former PM Scott Morrison’s perceived lack of speed in rolling out the Covid-19 vaccination program, while in 2020 it was doomscrolling, the practise of continuing to read negative stories in our news feeds.

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Nice one! I’ve been using gaslighting as a term to describe my neighbors for a while now. Most people haven’t asked what it meant so I thought it was a common term. Glad that more people are understanding what it means. It’s very insidious.

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