Gaslighting: Merriam-Webster picks its word of the year

When British playwright Patrick Hamilton wrote Gas Light successful 1938, small did helium cognize however often the connection would beryllium utilized successful the 21st Century.

Merriam-Webster, America's oldest dictionary publisher, has conscionable chosen "gaslighting" arsenic its connection of the year.

Searches connected its website for the connection person spiked by 1,740% successful 2022, according to the company.

Gaslighting is the enactment oregon signifier of grossly misleading someone, particularly for one's ain advantage.

"In this property of misinformation - of 'fake news', conspiracy theories, Twitter trolls, and heavy fakes - gaslighting has emerged arsenic a connection for our time," Merriam-Webster said successful a connection connected Monday.

Curiously, hunt involvement successful the connection was not driven by immoderate azygous event, the company's editor-at-large told the Associated Press.

"It was a connection looked up often each azygous time of the year," Peter Sokolowski told the US ligament service.

Gaslighting derives its origins from Hamilton's Victorian-era play acceptable successful London astir a middle-class matrimony based connected lies and deceit.

Lead quality Jack Manningham seeks to person his woman Bella that she is going insane, including by saying she is imagining the dimming of the state airy successful their home.

The play was doubly adapted for the screen: successful the UK successful 1940, past successful the US successful 1944. The American version, which stars Ingrid Bergman, won 2 Academy Awards and is preserved successful the US National Film Registry arsenic a "culturally, historically oregon aesthetically significant" work.

But arsenic Merriam-Webster notes, portion the word referred chiefly to intelligence manipulation successful the 20th Century, its modern usage is driven by "the immense summation successful channels and technologies utilized to mislead" people, particularly successful idiosyncratic and governmental contexts.

Also connected Tuesday, the institution noted respective different words that were among its astir looked-up this year.