Every year about this time, various dictionaries come up with a “Word of the Year.” Sometimes it’s a completely new word, sometimes it’s a word made up of a combination of other words, sometimes it’s just a new use of an existing word, sometimes it’s more than one word, and sometimes its isn’t a word at all — think emoji.
I checked a few days ago and the Oxford Dictionary hadn’t yet chosen their Word of the Year for 2022. They had it narrowed down to three choices: metaverse, #IStandWith, and Goblin mode. So we’ll stand by anxiously awaiting Oxford’s choice.
But Merriam-Webster has chosen it’s Word of the year. Their choice for 2022 is gaslighting. I looked up gaslighting in an old hard-copy dictionary (we really do still have one) and the definition read as follows: manipulate (someone) by psychological means into questioning their own sanity.
I guess today, in this age of misinformation, fake news, conspiracy theories, Twitter trolls, etc, gaslighting is an appropriate choice for Word of the Year.
The origin of the term gaslighting was apparently from the title of a 1938 play, and the movie based on that play. The plot involves a man attempting to make his wife believe that she is going insane. His mysterious activities in the attic cause the house’s gas lights to dim, but he insists to his wife that the lights are not dimming and that she can’t trust her own perceptions.
In recent years, the term gaslighting has changed a little, into something simpler and broader — “the act of grossly misleading someone, especially for a personal advantage.” So in today’s world, the word falls into the same category as deception and manipulation, like fake news.
Especially in the political world, the idea of a deliberate conspiracy to mislead has made gaslighting useful in describing lies that are part of a larger plan.
I think now would be a good time to register my vote for Word of the Year…. it’s a term and practice that is particularly disturbing to me. My choice — deepfake. Deepfake is an image or recording that has been convincingly altered and manipulated to misrepresent someone as doing or saying something that was not actually done or said. This is especially dangerous, because it offers visual and/or sound (incorrect) evidence to support a conspiracy, etc. Lots and lots of people already believe what they read without checking — probably even more people will believe what they see and hear. Just my thought….
Anyhow, Merriam-Webster points out that the English language has lots of ways to say “lie” — words like falsehood and untruth, deceitfulness, prevarication, dissemble and fib. During the Cold War, disinformation became popular.
Recently, with the enormous increase in communication channels and technologies that can be used to mislead, gaslighting has become the favored word for the perception of deception — so gaslighting it is — the Word of the Year.
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