Merriam-Webster, America’s oldest dictionary publisher, has just chosen “gaslighting” as its word of the year.
Gaslighting is the act or practice of grossly misleading someone, especially for one’s own advantage.
Searches on its website for the word have spiked by 1,740% in 2022, according to the company.
Merriam-Webster says in this age of misinformation of ‘fake news’, conspiracy theories, Twitter trolls, and deep fakes – gaslighting has emerged as a word for our time.
Merriam-Webster Editor-at-large, Peter Sokolowski says it was a word looked up frequently every single day of the year.
[Source: BBC]
