TONGUE TIED

Merriam-Webster Surprised by Its 2022 Word of the Year

After two years of COVID-heavy word searches that resulted in “pandemic” and “vaccine” being titled word of the year, 2022 offered a real shake-up.

There’s been a big word shakeup in 2022—and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. After two years of COVID-heavy word searches, making “pandemic” the word of 2020 and “vaccine” the word of 2021, Merriam-Webster has announced that its word of the year for 2022 is “gaslighting.” The year saw an increase in lookups by some 1,740 percent over 2021, though unlike most words-of-the-year, world events seemingly didn’t play a role. Gaslighting is the psychological manipulation of a person, often over an extended period of time, that “causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories” and can lead to loss of confidence or emotional or mental stability. It can happen in relationships, families, the workplace, and even medical settings. “It’s a word that has risen so quickly in the English language, and especially in the last four years, that it actually came as a surprise to me and to many of us,” Merriam-Webster’s editor at large, Peter Sokolowski, said, according to the Associated Press. “It was a word looked up frequently every single day of the year.”