The editors of the American dictionary Merriam-Webster announced on Monday the recognition of “gaslighting” as the word of the year 2022, arguing that the term reflects the “age of misinformation” in which we live, informs DPA.

According to Merriam-Webster, searches for the term, which is the title of a 1938 play about a man who tries to make his wife think she’s crazy, increased by 1,740% in 2022.

The dictionary defines “gaslighting” as “the act or practice of misleading a person for one’s own benefit.”

“In recent years, with the astonishing proliferation of channels and technologies used for disinformation, ‘gaslighting’ has become a favorite word for deception. That’s why (take our word for it!) it deserves the title of “Word of the Year,” wrote the editors of Merriam-Webster.

Among the words nominated for “Word of the Year” were “omicron”, a letter of the Greek alphabet used to denote a particularly contagious variant of the new coronavirus, and “sentinet”, which saw a surge in searches after a Google engineer said that AI- the company’s chatbot developed a humanoid consciousness.

Other terms nominated were “oligarch”, “codify”, “LGBTQIA”, “clay”, “raid” and “queen consort”.

“Bonus points (which have no monetary value) will be awarded to whoever can use all of these words (including gaslighting) in one sentence,” Merriam-Webster tweeted.

Merriam-Webster’s word of the year is a “statistical measure” of dictionary searches over the past year, another tweet said. (Agerpress)

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