2023 Davis captures the exterior scenes (shot on Inishmore, in the Aran Islands) in somber natural light, with candles and gaslight for the interiors, as befits an area where electricity would not have arrived until the 1970s. Philip Kennicott, Washington Post, 29 Apr. Noun But these images are also stagy and contrived, as if his birds are players on a stage, dramatically illuminated in the glow of gaslight. Its increasing use in many contexts contributed to making gaslighting Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year for 2022. Unlike lying, which tends to be between individuals, and fraud, which tends to involve organizations, gaslighting applies in both personal and political contexts, and is found in formal and technical writing as well as in colloquial use. The idea of a deliberate conspiracy to mislead has made gaslighting useful in describing lies that are part of a larger plan. In this use, the word is at home with other terms relating to modern forms of deception and manipulation, such as fake news and deepfake.
In the current century, the word has come to refer also to something simpler and broader: “the act or practice of grossly misleading someone, especially for a personal advantage” (sense 2). When gaslighting was first used in the mid-20th century, it referred to a kind of deception like that in the plots mentioned above (sense 1). His mysterious activities in the attic cause the house’s gas lights to dim, but he insists to his wife that the lights are not dimming and that she can’t trust her own perceptions. The origins of gaslighting are colorful: the term comes from the title of a 1938 play and the movies based on that play, the plots of which involve a man attempting to make his wife believe that she is going insane. The Origin and Semantic Development of Gaslighting
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