gaslighting means illumination by burning gas.
Why “gaslighting” is a great word
Gaslighting is a sustained form of psychological manipulation intended to cause a person to doubt their own perception of reality and sanity. From gaslight (in reference to the 1944 film *Gaslight*, where a husband manipulates his wife into doubting her sanity) + -ing (suffix forming nouns). Unlike lying, which is the simple assertion of a falsehood, or persuasion, a neutral attempt to shift opinion, gaslighting is a campaign of emotional assault on the very faculty of belief. It is the cold drip of a contradiction after you saw what you saw, the strategic misplacement of your keys followed by a sigh about your forgetfulness, the steady erosion of a known truth into a shaky suspicion—a quiet violence that aims not just to deceive, but to dismantle the self, until the victim learns to distrust the one thing they can never escape: their own consciousness.
Etymology
For the figurative sense, from gaslight + -ing; see explanation at gaslight § Etymology 2.
noun
- Illumination by burning gas.e.g.“This is a general article summarizing progress in incandescent gaslighting since the days of the flat flame burner.” — December, 1909, J. S. Dow, “Pressgasbeleuchtung, by R. Bremer”, in The Illuminating Engineer, volume IV, number 10, page 520:
- Manipulation intended to trick the victim(s) into doubting their perception of reality.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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