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Comment by shockeychap | Hacker News Reader

"The act or practice of grossly misleading someone especially for one's own advantage."

This is a very sloppy definition based on how the term "gaslighting" has been recently (ab)used, but it's not the right meaning. Gaslighting refers to the very specific mechanism of deceiving someone into believing that their perception or beliefs are wrong, and thus convincing them that they shouldn't trust their own judgment.

It does NOT refer simply to any notion of misleading or deception, though that's how it's been used in recent years.

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Otherwise known as lying. IMO, lying crosses the line to “gaslighting” when the intent is to make the person feel as though their perception is wrong or they’re going crazy.

Think people have gotten a bit silly with their overuse of the term. Most people lie out of self-preservation or as a defense mechanism, not to intentionally harm the other person (although it may still have that effect),

I agree that the original meaning is more specific and it's a very useful one. But the role of this dictionary is to describe usage, and as you noted, usage on this one has definitely shifted over the last few years.

I doubt most native speakers who recognize and use this word are aware of the first, original meaning. So they're right to record it this way regardless of how we feel about losing that original sense of it.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/descriptive-vs...

You can disagree with this approach philosophically (but good luck lol), but it's the one this organization has chosen.

Indeed, this is Merriam-Webster doing what they openly claim to do: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/is-irregardles...

> One reason is that of scale

Gaslighting has been used significantly more commonly in recent years.

> Another reason is consistency of intent

Gaslighting is almost exclusively used to mean lying for selfish gain, irregardless of any intended psychological effects on the person being lied to.

They are simply recognizing the cultural significance -- distinct and different from the origin -- of the word.

> This is a very sloppy definition based on how the term "gaslighting" has been recently (ab)used,

A dictionary definition is a description of how a word is actually used in practice, not a prescription according to some abstract Platonic meaning.

It's fair to observe that meanings of words change in practice, and the dictionary is there to document what words "do" mean, not what they "should" mean. However, a dictionary also plays a part in legitimizing new definitions, particularly in the early stages of when a word is being used in new ways. Look up the word "peruse" and you'll find two definitions that are effective opposites. I personally think that a word's meaning serves a purpose of concisely conveying ideas, and when you dilute meanings so that you can shoehorn a term into any space you want, you wind up destroying pieces of language and communication in the process. I don't think that "gaslighting" has been misused long enough to justify having a new definition that effectively cements the new meaning and throws away the ideas it used to convey. My hope is that the use of "gaslighting" to accuse anybody with whom you disagree of malicious intent (which is how it's come to mean any kind of deception) will eventually fade away as people find other terms to try to re-appropriate.

That doesn't change the fact that the provided definition is sloppy, and significantly deviates from the more nuanced, and long accepted definition. The parent commenter's point is still valid.

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