gaslight

[ gas-lahyt ]

verb (used with object)

, gas·light·ed or gas·lit, gas·light·ing.

1. to cause (a person) to doubt their judgment, memory, or sanity through the use of psychological manipulation:

   How do you know if your partner is gaslighting you?

2. to deceive (a person or group of people) through repetition of a constructed false narrative:

   The cable news networks have been gaslighting their viewers with partisan coverage of the bill.

noun

1. light produced by the combustion of illuminating gas.
2. a gas burner or gas jet for producing light through the process of combustion.

adjective

1. gaslit ( def 2 ).

gaslight

/ ˈɡæsˌlaɪt /

noun

1. a type of lamp in which the illumination is produced by an incandescent mantle heated by a jet of gas
2. the light produced by such a lamp

Other Words From

• gas·light·ed gas·lit adjective
• gas·light·ing noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of gaslight¹

First recorded in 1800–10; gas ( def ) + light ¹( def ); gaslight def 1 in reference to the 1944 movie Gaslight, in which an abusive husband secretly and repeatedly dims and brightens the gaslights in the house while accusing his wife of imagining the flickering

Example Sentences

I’m just saying that is part of the mystery that we want to un-gaslight people about and this is a way to do it.

From Washington Post

From a thematic standpoint, I was struck by the show’s exploration of how society can gaslight its scapegoats into believing—and thus embodying—the worst stereotypes about themselves.

From Time

Amazon has left no stone unturned in its efforts to gaslight its own employees.

From Time

RWDSU President Stuart Appelbaum said in a statement offered to TechCrunch,Amazon has left no stone unturned in its efforts to gaslight its own employees.

From TechCrunch

“Amazon feels that it has to go to extremes like this in order to gaslight its workers about the dreadful working conditions at its Bessemer warehouse,” Appelbaum told the press in response to the ads.

From TechCrunch

Paxton was in the Army and visited the Village on the weekends to play gigs at the Gaslight and the Commons.

From The Daily Beast

The opening title card to Inside Llewyn Davis tells us that it is winter 1961 at the Gaslight Café in Greenwich Village.

From The Daily Beast

The gaslight was more than she could bear, she dropped her head again, covering her face with both hands.

From Project Gutenberg

Here and there chandeliers were being lighted for the concerts, blazes of gaslight flared among the green trees.

From Project Gutenberg

She said if he would only permit the gaslight to remain burning, it would be all they would require.

From Project Gutenberg

Their application for admission led to the withdrawal of a bolt, and they stood within the gaslight of the passage.

From Project Gutenberg

The drizzle had turned into long gray rods of rain; they streaked the gaslight and pricked the shallow pools unceasingly.

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• beacon
• flashlight
• kerosene lamp
• torch

About This Word

What does gaslighting mean?

Gaslighting is a form of emotional abuse or psychological manipulation involving distorting the truth in order to confuse or create doubt in another person to the point they question their sanity or reality.

Where did the term gaslighting come from?

The term gaslighting originates from a 1938 play called Gas Light by Patrick Hamilton. It was eventually adapted into a film, compounded into a single word as Gaslight, in 1944. The story features a conniving and murderous husband who tries to conceal his true identity from his wife. In the film, the husband makes his wife go crazy and steal valuable jewels her family has hidden away. Part of his efforts include toying with their gas-powered lights so they flicker. He convinces her that she’s imagining this, trying to drive her insane.

As a result of the film’s success, gaslighting became a common way of describing emotional abuse or manipulation that causes one to question their sanity. Evidence for this metaphorical extension emerges in the 1950–60s.

While there was some occasional political use in the 1990s, the term rose to particular prominence decades later during the 2016 U.S. election. Then-candidate Trump’s campaign and subsequent administration has been accused of “gaslighting America” for, among other things, labeling verifiable facts as “fake news.”

How to use the term gaslighting  

The gerund gaslighting is used to describe the act of such sanity-questioning manipulation. Its verb form is to gaslight (e.g., to gaslight the public), taking a past tense of gaslighted or gaslit.

The term is used to describe toxic or unhealthy relationship dynamics involving power and control. It’s often used by victims who retroactively discover that a close friend or loved one has been extremely deceitful. As such, gaslighting is commonly associated with infidelity and has been named as a form of child abuse.

Gaslighting is increasingly used more casually to describe lying or deceitful behavior. For instance, some media critics have described the misleading narratives of popular podcasts S-Town and The Polybius Conspiracy as gaslighting the audience.

More examples of gaslighting:

“Gaslighting identifies a real phenomenon: the way critics of a line of thought sometimes try to discount the perceptions of the person producing that thought.”
—Katy Waldman, Slate, April 2016

Note

This content is not meant to be a formal definition of this term. Rather, it is an informal summary that seeks to provide supplemental information and context important to know or keep in mind about the term’s history, meaning, and usage.