Gaslighting is the Mirriam Webster word of the year with good reason. In quantitative terms there was a 1,740 per cent increase in lookups, and sustained searches for the word through the year. In contextual terms, the proliferating vehicles of deception, like fake news and deepfakes added resonance.

Language, which is like the data of experience, is as amazing as stories, and as potent. Gaslight is a 1938 play and film in which a man makes his wife doubt her own sanity by denying that their gas lights are flickering (they are). Over time, the story’s shape and dynamic have been used to pinpoint similarly undermining experiences in very different contexts, until the analogy has become a verb. To gaslight means psychologically manipulating someone into doubting their own validity and sanity.