gaslighting
noun

- the action of tricking or controlling someone by making them believe things that are not true, especially by suggesting that they may be mentally ill

- to make someone question their reality

Cambridge Dictionary / Merriam-Webster

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ORIGIN

Gaslighting is derived from the 1944 film Gaslight, which is a story about a husband who uses trickery to convince his wife that she is mentally unwell in order to steal from her.

Gaslighting was largely an obscure or esoteric term until the mid-2010s, when it started to become mainstream. According to the American Psychological Association, the term “once referred to manipulation so extreme as to induce mental illness or to justify commitment of the gaslighted person to a psychiatric institution but is now used more generally”. The term is now simply defined as “to make someone question their reality”.

The American Dialect Society recognized gaslight as the most useful new word-of-the-year in 2016. Oxford University Press named gaslighting as a runner-up in their list of the most popular new words of 2018.

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SYNONYMS for obtaining, arranging, or achieving by deceitful methods or by trickery

bamboozling, beguiling, conning, contriving, deceiving, deluding, doing a number on, duping, entrapping, finagling, fooling, GASLIGHTING, hoaxing, hoodwinking, leading up the garden path, misleading, manipulating, playing games, pulling a fast one on, setting up, snookering, stage-managing, stringing along, suckering, sucking in, swaying, taking for a ride, trapping, tricking, twisting around your little finger, wangling

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SMUGGLE OWAD into a conversation today, say something like:

“Nowadays, it’s interesting to observe GASLIGHTING happening at a group level in social media, politics, business, and even in the sciences.”

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THANKS to Jana for suggesting today’s OWAD.

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HERZLICHEN DANK to all readers helping me keep OWAD alive with single or monthly donations at:

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and,

Paul Smith, IBAN: DE75 7316 0000 0002 5477 40