Monday 28 November 2022

gaslighting (10. 342)

By dint of search statistics, Merriam-Webster reports that its word of the year is the manipulative, misdirecting term that causes the target to question the surety of their own sanity taken from the title of the George Cukor 1944 classic. Though a perennial favourite of late, look ups are still exponentially high over a range of real and perceived dauntless reasons to doubt credulity. Other terms that caused people to consult the dictionary this past year were oligarch—driven by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and attendant sanctions, codify, as in enshrining laws once taken for settled and loamy—another Wordle-driven hunt (like ‘homer’) though the correct answer was clown.