According to Merriam-Webster, 2022’s Word of the Year is “gaslighting.” Gaslighting is “the act or practice of grossly misleading someone, especially for one’s own advantage.” It usually produces disorientation and mistrust. In today’s age of “misinformation, fake news, conspiracy theories, Twitter trolls, and deepfakes,” Merriam-Webster said in a statement that “gaslighting has emerged as a word for our time.”
Continuously published since 1828, Merriam-Webster selects the word of the year by determining which word had the most significant number of lookups during the calendar year. “2022 saw a 1740% increase in lookups for ‘gaslighting,’ with high interest throughout the year,” Merriam-Webster said.
The DailyMail reported the first recorded use of “gaslighting” was in a 1938 play called Gas Light by Patrick Hamilton. In 1944, there was a film adaptation by George Cukor called Gaslight, starring Ingrid Bergman as Paula Alquist and Charles Boyer as Gregory Anton. The movie saw the couple “marrying after a whirlwind romance.” Gregory turns out to be a deceptive gaslighter who in one example insists “that the complaints [Paula] makes about the constant dimming of their London townhouse’s gaslights are a figment of her troubled mind” — but in reality, they weren’t.
By the mid-20th century, “gaslighting” referred to a kind of deception like that in the Bergman movie. Merriam-Webster defines this use 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
Today, “gaslighting” refers also “to something simpler and broader: the act or practice of grossly misleading someone, especially for a personal advantage.” This use relates to “forms of deception and manipulation, such as fake news, deepfake, and artificial intelligence.” It also encompasses “the idea of a deliberate conspiracy to mislead,” making “gaslighting” a practical description of “lies that are part of a larger plan.” While lying “tends to be between individuals, and fraud, which tends to involve organizations, gaslighting applies in both personal and political contexts.”
Recommended: The Strange New and Mostly Annoying Words of 2022
Of course, “gaslighting” wasn’t the only word with significant lookup numbers this year. Additional words with significant lookups on Merriam-Webster’s website in 2022 included:
Oligarch — One of a class of individuals who through private acquisition of state assets amassed great wealth that is stored especially in foreign accounts and properties and who typically maintain close links to the highest government circles. Lookups were fueled by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Omicron — The 15th letter of the Greek alphabet used to name the most recent version of the COVID virus. That variant became one of the most widespread forms of COVID in 2022. Major spikes in lookups accompanied a surge in cases in early January following November reports that the omicron booster was not significantly more effective than the older vaccines.
Codify — A process by which Congress can make laws; the word literally means “to make a code” with ‘code’ essentially a synonym of ‘law.’ Lookups increased 193% for 2022 driven by the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in June.
LGBTQIA —An abbreviation for “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning (one’s sexual or gender identity), intersex, and asexual/aromantic/agender.” 2022 lookups saw an 800% increase over 2021 during Pride Month and after the Colorado nightclub shooting.
Sentient — A human-like consciousness. Lookups spiked 480% in 2022 “after a Google engineer claimed the company’s AI chatbot” was sentient.
Loamy — A soil consisting of a friable mixture of varying proportions of clay, silt, and sand. Lookups surged “2.5 million percent” in May and “4.5 million percent” in August when ‘loamy’ was the answer to the word puzzler Quordle.
Raid —“A sudden invasion by officers of the law.” Lookups spiked by 970% “when the FBI executed a search warrant at former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in early August.
Queen Consort — The wife of a reigning King. Lookups shot to the top after the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the ascension to the throne of her son Charles in reference to his wife Camilla.
In case you’re curious, nearly every PJ Media columnist has used the 2022 Word of the Year in articles this year, including my piece about Joe Biden gaslighting Americans at the gas pump, Chris Queen’s piece about the gaslighting mainstream media, Stacey Lennox’s article on COVID gaslighting, and Ben Bartee’s piece on global depopulation gaslighting. And an archive of Merriam-Webster’s past Words of the Year can be found here.
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