Word of the Year

Are you even the least bit surprised that the 2022 Word of the Year comes from a nearly 80-year-old Hollywood movie and literally means “the perception of deception”?

Considering the state of our republic, I am not.

“Gaslighting.” Seriously, that’s the 2022 Word of the Year.

It was a word looked up frequently every single day. According to the folks at Merriam-Webster, this year saw a 1,740% increase in lookups for gaslighting. WTH?

And, unlike previous years, there wasn’t a single event that drove significant spikes in the curiosity, as it usually happens with M-W’s chosen word.

In 2021, their word was vaccine. In 2020, it was pandemic.

But not this year. Why? Because the gaslighting was pervasive. As in, spreading widely, like the smell of stinky cheese in an office break room. (You know who you are.)

Alas, 2022 brought deep fakes and the dark web. Deep states and fake news. And a whole lot of trolling – even before Musk’s maligning. 

“It’s a word that has risen so quickly in the English language, and especially in the last four years, that it actually came as a surprise to me and to many of us,” said Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor at large, in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press.

Merriam-Webster officially defines gaslighting as “psychological manipulation of a person usually over an extended period of time that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one’s emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator.”

Let’s not sugar coat it. Gaslighting is just plain mind manipulation, often grossly misleading and sometimes downright deceitful.

Why? For one’s own advantage. Period.

It has likely happened to you at least once in your life. In a relationship. At the doctor. With a friend. Some examples:

• I did that because I love you.
• Trust me, it’s all in your head.
• I’m sorry you feel that way.

Before 2020 (shocker), the word was best known for the 1944 film “Gaslight” starring Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotton and Angela Lansbury.

American director George Cukor remade a British film based on a 1938 play by Paul Hamilton. In the movie, a young woman is made to feel she is going insane by her manipulative husband. Part of that manipulation is when the gas lights in the home dim, the husband tells his wife that the dimmed lights are only in her imagination.

It wasn’t.

Aside: Apparently, Lansbury’s death in October drove some interest in lookups of the word. At 19, she played Nancy Oliver, a young maid told not to bother the husband’s “high-strung” wife.

In this age of misinformation, gaslighting has emerged as a word for our time. To quote my new virtual BFF Joyce Vance, who tweeted this gem on Nov. 28: “As a nerdy kid growing up reading the dictionary, I never imagined Merriam-Webster would be part of saving the republic, but here we are in 2022.”

Here we are indeed.

For my fellow word nerds, other top selections of 2022 included codify, oligarch, omicron, LGBTQIA, raid, sentient, Queen Consort and loamy.

Does that last word sound fishy to you? I’m sorry you feel that way.