How "gaslighting" became the 2022 dictionary word of the year

If you used the word "gaslighting" recently, you are not alone. Merriam-Webster, the dictionary people, recently selected it as the 2022 "word of the year". [Merpel grouses—"you are such a nerd", with the rest of the world following the World Cup]. Whatever, the story of how the word went from the name of a theatre production to a movie(s) name to common parlance is a fascinating tale of how visual and experiential contents seep into daily lexiconic use.

Meriam Webster defines gaslighting a "the act or practice of grossly misleading someone, especially for one's advantage." It is the perfect word for our times, described as the "age of misinformation", be it " 'fake news', conspiracy theories, Twitter trolls, and deepfakes."

That said, "gaslighting" has a no single meaning. Rather, it connotes a range of related behaviors towards an intended victim, including obfuscation, feigning a lack of understanding, challenging the victim's memory, diverting the direction of the conversation, trivializing the thoughts of the victim, and engaging in vigorous denial. The list goes on, all variations of a theme.

How true this is can be seen in that, in 2022, there was an increase of 1740% in "lookups" (presumably on the dictionary's website). This suggests a linguistic symbiosis—a rise in the instances of the use of the word, accompanied by a reader's uncertainty, has led to a substantial rise among those checking that they understood what the word means.

How did the word reach such an exalted status? Recalling Ernest Hemmingway's quip in "The Sun Also Rises" -- "How did you go bankrupt?" "Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly." So too was the lexicological rise of gaslighting.

First, there was the 1938 London play, "Gas Light", by Patrick Hamilton, which made its successful way to Broadway under the name "Angel Street". Then came a successful 1940 cinema version, staying mostly true to the theatre version (released as a one-word title). Only four years later, in 1944, a movie remake under the same one-word title was produced, albeit it notably deviated from the earlier story line.

The 1944 version, which still enjoys wide-spread cinematic acclaim, focuses on a nefarious husband, played by Charles Boyer, who uses various forms of psychological and other chancery to convince his wife, portrayed by Ingrid Bergman, that she is mentally unwell. In current parlance, Boyer was "gaslighting" Bergman to accomplish his illicit ends. (Still, the word is not used in the film.).

Taking stock of these circumstances, oddities are revealed. First, the name of the two movies changes from two words to one (inadvertently making it easier to later transmogrify into a verb and gerund). Second, the commercial reasons for making a remake under the same name but a different story line, are opaque. This seems hardly the stuff for the movie title turning into a phrase of general currency.

But that is what has happened. "Why" is a more difficult matter to explain. (We rely primarily on the Wikipedia entry, here, and the 2017 article by Ben Yagoda, "How Old is 'Gaslighting' "?)

The Wikipedia entry states that the term was "largely an obscure or esoteric term until mid-2010s, when it broadly seeped into English lexicon." Until then, the spread of the use of "gaslight" can be broken down into three phases, entertainment culture, science-related (mostly psychiatry and psychology), and broader cultural use.

As for entertainment culture, examples include " a written reference to a 1956 episode of the "I Love Lucy" television series, and the transcript of a 1965 episode of the "Gomer Pyle" television series. The editor of "The Historical Dictionary of American Slang" even reported oral use of the term in 1956 by his own mother.

Its move from the entertainment world to the psychiatry and psychology literature can be traced to a 1961 book, "Culture and Personality", by Anthnony F. C. Wallace. Such use took off by the 1970's. In the words of Yagoda:

The move from sitcoms to psychotherapy occurred quickly; the OED cites a 1969 text: 'It is also popularly believed to 'gaslight' a perfectly healthy person into psychosis by interpreting his own behavior to him as symptomatic of serious mental illness.' The term was picked up, especially in reference to abusers of spouse, partners, and children, and was commonplace by 1990.

The onset of the use of "gaslighting" in media print is associated with a 1995 column by Maureen Dowd in "The New York Times". The term was thereafter sporadically used in the newspaper. From there, it spread rapidly and broadly during the 2010's. Nerdy evidence for such is seen that the American Dialect Society recognized the word gaslight "as the 'most useful' new word of the year in 2016. Moving to the gerund, Oxford University Press in 2018 designated gaslighting as a runner-up for its most popular new words of the year.

Still, what is absent in these anecdotes is a mapping of how these various nodes of adoption and use of the word developed and spread. Ph.D. anyone?

Consider how "Ground Hog Day" went from the title of a 1993, almost instantaneously iconic movie, to a lexiconic staple, within the span of a few years. The movie, starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell, tells of a haughty television personality, sent to report on whether Punxsutawney Phil has seen his shadow. The Bill Murray character is condemned to reliving the same day in Punxsutawney until he comes to self-realization to his betterment.

Overnight, the movie title became an expression referring to a situation where events recur in the same manner. But oh, so different are these circumstances from those of "gaslighting." As for "ground hog day", the film was well-received, and its contents were early on well-recognized by a wide swathe of the population. As such, how the film title moved to adoption within the public lexicon is intuitively appreciated.

In contrast, the 1944 movie is far-removed from the generation that later adopted it. The fact that it survived in the public consciousness is due in part to the creativity of a small number of entertainers, sketch by sketch, enabling the term to later flourish -- "gradually, then suddenly."

A final word from the IP angle. No copyright or other IP right exists in a movie title qua title. Still, this title had the power for wide-spread appropriation by the broader culture, communicating a range of meanings without any of them becoming subject to proprietary claims.

The picture on the lower left is by Chris Flook and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.