[music]

You're such a

Gaslighter, denier

Doin' anything to get your ass farther

Brian Lehrer: If you know that song by The Chicks or can hear the lyrics clearly, then you've already figured out that Merriam-Webster's word of the year for 2022 is gaslighting. We'll end today talking about how the word gets used, where it comes from, what it actually means, and why a word that seems like it's been around a long time gets to be the Word of the Year of 2022. With us now, Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster, Editor at Large. Hi, Peter. Welcome back to WNYC. Glad you could join us.

Peter Sokolowski: It's great to be with you. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we're going to open this right up for you too. Where do you hear the word gaslighting most frequently, or how do you use it? 212-433-WYNC. What do you understand to be the meaning of a word that has really taken on a few different meanings? You can also tell us a story of being gaslighted or if you want to do true confessions of a time that you gaslight someone else, but with any of that, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or Tweet @BrianLehrer.

Peter, for you, the lexicographer, what does gaslighting actually mean?

Peter Sokolowski: The broader sense that is widely seen today, it means the act or practice of grossly misleading someone, especially for one's own advantage. People familiar with the word will sometimes say, "That's not what it really means, but words have their lives of their own." The narrower sense from which it came, which states back to the mid-20th century, is that psychological sense.

Psychological manipulation of a person usually over an extended period of time, often trying to make that person feel that they don't believe their own eyes. That use is still, of course, in common use in psychological practices and in interpersonal relationships. The broader sense that means strategic lying is what we see most frequently.

Brian Lehrer: Strategic lying but of that kind in particular that I think you were just getting at, where you actually try to make somebody think that they're going crazy or that they, as you say, don't believe what they're seeing with their own eyes. That's the psychological dimension, making somebody at the extreme end doubt their own sanity.

Peter Sokolowski: That's exactly what was depicted in the movie and the play that it was based on which was called Gaslight back in the mid-1940s. It's a word that has come into its own. The fact is, since 2017, this word has been used in print more frequently by leaps and bounds. This is a word that has entered into our age of doubt, to be honest. The technology that informs us also deceives us. We now have a word that expresses that instability of meaning.

Brian Lehrer: That word comes up on the show. I used it coincidentally in the context of one of the political segments today. How is it that a word that was the title of a movie, as you say in the 1940s, an Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer movie, Gaslight from the 1940s, how does that become the Merriam-Webster word of the year in 2022?

Peter Sokolowski: Because first of all, we are measuring our statistics. This is a direct reflection of the reason people go to the dictionary, which words are being looked up. We're not giving a guess at the zeitgeist. We're telling you as a clear report which words are most frequently looked up in the dictionary. We do take a little bit into account for the fact that the dictionary is there to measure the language.

It's not there to measure the news, for example. We do remove from our list those evergreen words that are looked up day in, day out, year in, year out, which is what the dictionary is for. Words like affect and effect and integrity and paradigm and ubiquitous are looked up every day. If we remove those words, we see what is different about 2022.

Brian Lehrer: Looking back at some of your recent words of the year, which due to some degree follow the news. No surprise, perhaps that vaccine was the word of the year in 2021, pandemic in 2020. It was, they. You'll have to explain this one.

Maybe we talked about it that year, but I don't remember. It was the word they in 2019, and we could go back from there. Do you remember that? Why was they the Merriam-Webster word of the year in 2019?

Peter Sokolowski: Sure. Without question, one of the principal discussions about language in this decade is identity. We're talking about they as a personal pronoun. They used as a singular pronoun, of course, is ancient in English. It goes back 400, 500 years or more. Then the more recent use as a non-binary pronoun is much more common. In fact, it's much more common even this year than it was three years ago. I'm sure all of us have encountered that. That was a term in discussion and wide debate during that year, and that's why it was word of the Year.

Brian Lehrer: It wasn't in the polarization sense, like looking at they, it's the they/them gender.

Peter Sokolowski: Absolutely.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. Surreal in 2016 was your word of the year. Did that have something to do with the Trump election?

Peter Sokolowski: Oh, it was a big factor. The fact is, what we have learned over the 20 years or more that we've been watching this data is that there are some words that come back. One word is, unfortunately, the word surreal, the most looked-up word in moments of shock and surprise. It was the most looked-up word after 9/11. It was the most looked-up word after the Boston Marathon bombings and after Robin Williams' suicide.

It was also the most looked-up word after Donald Trump's election in November of 2016. It's a word that Americans spontaneously use. What's interesting to me about that one is it's not from an utterance by a newsmaker. It's not a word that say the president used in a speech or that journalists use in a headline. It's a word that simply people go to the dictionary to look up as the, I think, beginning of reflection and philosophy.

Brian Lehrer: I think we're going to get an interesting practical take on gaslighting being used as a word in the world from Janine in Bergen County. Janine, you're on WNYC. Hi, there.

Janine: Oh, hi. Hi, Brian. I love your show. I listen all the time. I was just like, "Oh, yes, I want to call in on this one." I'm a therapist. I hear this word. I actually never used it, but in my practice, this past year and a half people will come in and say, "Oh, yes, they're gaslighting me." I said, "Oh, what does that mean to you?" I explain it as this. When a person, you're having a conversation or there's people around and suddenly somebody looks at you and you're being manipulated to believe that it's you that's wrong.

You've done something wrong. You're not right. You're not doing something correctly. You're manipulated into believing it, even though it's not you, it's the other person. It's another way of--

Brian Lehrer: In what context are you hearing it from your patients or your clients? Is it in love relationships or something else?

Janine: It's relationships. It's a lot of sibling relationships and friend relations, siblings. I hear this from siblings or, actually, parent-child. It's the older adult child who is manipulative of the parent and says no. "See, now you're reacting. See, I said this and now you're getting all upset," [chuckles] to the parent, like, "I'm not supposed to do that."

Brian Lehrer: You're crazy. I'm not provoking you. [chuckles] Do you know what I mean? Thank you. Thank you very much. Very illuminating from the therapist's chair to hear that application similar, I think. Brenda on Twitter writes, "Back in the '90s, my brother-in-law cheated on my sister. He was telling her it was somehow her fault. I remember thinking how much like Gaslight, the movie, it all was."

Is that the context in which-- I don't know if you see it, Merriam-Webster, the context in which these things are looked up, but it's interesting on the family relations side?

Peter Sokolowski: We are good at reading data. We're not good at reading minds. I always say that. However, we do see the company this word keeps in print and absolutely-- and especially earlier on in the 2010s up until 2017 or so when it started to be using more frequently, started to be used more frequently in the public's sphere for politics and for the communications of corporations, for example.

Absolutely, it has always principally had this interpersonal sense. A lot of it does have to do with apologies and that kind of nonapology where one says, "I'm sorry you feel hurt," or, "I'm sorry you took offense," rather than taking responsibility.

Brian Lehrer: One of our producers said yesterday when we were planning this, that she hears the word a lot on TikTok and that it's one example of how discussion about dating and relationships has become so pathologized on that app. Maybe you also see a dramatic increase in the searches for the word gaslighting revealing something about changes in the way we're talking about dating relationships.

Peter Sokolowski: Absolutely and the fact is too about this word it's not just about interpersonal relationships. As I said, it's often used in the context of very serious politics and corporate communications. What's interesting to me further is that it's used as much by the left as it is by the right. This is a word that really has come into its own this year and our data shows it.

Unlike vaccine and pandemic which were kind of obviously tenth-pool words that were keyed to individual news stories that were obviously massive stories in our culture. This word didn't have a single story associated with it. It is simply the story of the year in terms of our interpretation of information as it comes to us.

Brian Lehrer: There's definitely, even though we've been talking mostly about the personal relationships context, a political context. I would tend to say if you did an MSNBC word cloud, the word gaslight would come up pretty big.

Peter Sokolowski: Absolutely.

Brian Lehrer: Sharon in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi Sharon.

Sharon: Hi. I had my niece who lived out of town and had a boyfriend that I did not suspect was on the up and up. What I did is I invited them to my barbecue and I walked in on him in the kitchen speaking to another woman. I knew it was a woman because he had it was FaceTime and I had to call the police on him.

Because he acted like he didn't want to leave my house and that I was going crazy. He was trying to gaslight me, but I told him that you can't gaslight me like you gaslight her. Because you know what? This is my house and you get out.

Brian Lehrer: When you stand up to a bully, he probably got out?

Sharon: Oh, yes he got out very fast and that was the end of that relationship, but I couldn't do it over the phone. I had to invite him in my space to see whether he was actually manipulating her.

Brian Lehrer: The gaslighting experience. Sharon, thank you very much. We've got maybe a minute and a half left. Gaslight is your word of the year or gaslighting at Merriam- Webster, but you have a top 10. You want to go through some of the other runners-up?

Peter Sokolowski: Absolutely. Most of these words are associated with single stories that we will recognize, no surprise, the word omicron, the major variant of 2022. The word oligarch, a word we associate with the former Soviet Union and with those people who were sanctioned by our government and others at the moment of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The word codify, which is a typical lookup that we see, which is a technical legal or governmental term that has to do of course with the repeal of Roe versus Wade.

Brian Lehrer: One more tweet that I can't resist. Listener Lizzie writes, "Gaslight becoming so popular can be dangerous as more gaslighters can use it to gaslight the gas light tin into thinking they've gas lit the gas lighter."

Peter Sokolowski: Exactly. Really what this word has--

Brian Lehrer: That's the best use of 280 characters of the year. Anyway, go ahead.

Peter Sokolowski: The English language has many synonyms for lying and the fact is the gaslight brings something new, which is that it's very much about the power of the narrative, the power of controlling the narrative. Yes, a lot of lying is strategic, but this isn't about stealing cookies from the cookie jar. This is always about a kind of nefarious intent and strategy and that brings something new and unique and specific and sometimes clinical to this word.

Brian Lehrer: Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster, Editor at Large, thank you for not gaslighting us, and thank you for talking about Merriam-Webster's Word and words of the year.

Peter Sokolowski: It's always a treat. Thank you.

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