Merriam-Webster, a dictionary publisher in the United States, has announced 'Gaslighting' as the word of the year.
According to the company, the word has spiked 1,740% on website searches.
Merriam-Webster's editor at large Peter Sokolowski said that the word 'gaslighting' rose quickly in the English language over the past four years which came as a surprise to him and others.
He added that it was a word which people looked up on a daily basis of the year.
To know its meaning, Merriam-Webster defined 'gaslighting' as a form of psychological manipulation 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."
Broadly, the dictionary defines the word as “the act or practice of grossly misleading someone especially for one’s own advantage.”
Gaslighting is a wrongful act mostly used by abusers in relationships which can also be done by politicians and other newsmakers, that can also happen between romantic partners and among friends.
Later on, the term gaslighting was used by mental health practitioners to clinically describe a form of prolonged coercive control in abusive relationships.
More than 80 years ago, the word was brought to life through ta play in 1938 'Gas Light', by Patrick Hamilton, which birthed two film adaptations in the 1940s.
With logs of 100 million pageviews a month on its site, Merriam-Webster chooses its word of the year based on data.
Sokolowski and his team eliminate evergreen words which are commonly looked up to gauge which word received a significant bump over the year before.
Meanwhile, 'gaslighting' spent all of 2022 in the top 50 words looked up on Merriam-Webster's site, making it earn the top dog ward of the year status.
