Courtesy of Wikipedia.org
A young worker came to replace a light plug in my apartment the other day. I’d complained about the switch before, but he’d never found the trouble. This time, it sparked in his hands like a firecracker. “See,” I laughed, amused by his startled expression. “I wasn’t gaslighting you.”
“Gaslighting?” he echoed as he rendered the switch harmless. “I’ve heard that expression before. What’s it mean?”
I told him the term originated from a 1944 suspense film starring Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer, and Joseph Cotton. Boyer, famous as a romantic figure of the time, played a villain in the picture. A poor man, he wanted to commit his rich wife to an asylum to gain control over her money. His means was to Gerry-rig the gas chandeliers to flicker on occasion. Each time his wife complained, he insisted that what she saw was in her imagination. “Gaslighting” as an expression meaning to induce self-doubt caught on.
Because the term comes from pop culture, gaslighting has no etymology. Tracing the origin of the words “gas” and “light” would never reveal meaning. So, take that, Noam Chomsky.
Chomsky is a genius who devoted himself to linguistics and word derivation, among many subjects, but I think of him as the bane of my college days. Back then, I cared nothing for etymology, and today, as a writer, I feel the same. How we use words in the present is my concern. Worrying about their history is a subject for masochists.
Like any writer, I can testify that language is a slithy tove creature, difficult to capture and control in the best of times. In simplest terms, “words are not stable.” (“Pseudo-Etymology,” by Talia Felix, Skeptical Inquirer, July/August 2025, pg. 9.)
I’m not complaining. Frankly, I love their duplicity and the ease with which they contradict themselves. To buckle, for example, either secures something or describes its collapse. To cleave means to split or adhere. Contronyms like these may drive scientists crazy, but they provided fig leaves to politicians, fodder to attorneys, and inspiration to poets.
Making a similar point, a news anchor once explained how conservative and liberal Supreme Court justices differed in their way of making decisions. Conservatives, he said, reached for their etymological dictionaries to discover a word’s meaning at the time of the Constitutional Convention. Liberals focused on the contemporary usage.
Whether his remark was true or not, I don’t know, but I can’t envy the conservatives if it is true. Historical anomalies pop up in the Constitution as early as the Preamble. Take the phrase, “We the People.” Should we accept the 18th-century understanding that it refers only to men? Or shall we argue that the 19th Amendment expanded the term to include women? Either way, it appears that for the prior 100 years, women lived in ambiguity.
Like words, jurists are also unstable, a condition that also complicates our understanding. For hundreds of years, children seated in their narrow desks accepted their teachers’ assurances that in a democracy, no one stands above the law. The youngsters may also have been obliged to memorize Article 2, section 4 of the U. S. Constitution: The President, Vice President, and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
Such simple and direct language causes me to wonder. Did the High Court judges consult their dictionaries when they decided otherwise about Article 2, Section 4? Their recent carve-out, which says a President is immune from prosecution for crimes committed while in office, contradicts centuries of legal history. Some might call their judgement magical thinking. And yet, it is consistent with their other rulings. For example, I know of no common dictionary that defines money as speech or a corporation as a person.
Critics have accused the High Court of muddying clear water, and I wouldn’t argue. Perhaps it would be best to deprive judges of their dictionaries, explaining that no one can divine the past with accuracy. Given the best intentions, history relies upon interpretation. And interpretation, as we know, is ripe for gaslighting.
BOYCOTT TESLA
