Gaslighting is manipulation that makes someone believe they remember or understand events wrongly, so they start to doubt themselves. The key sign isn't just lying but trying to make you distrust your own memory: That never happened, you're imagining things. The word came from psychology and is now common in everyday speech and on social media; as a joke, people say you're gaslighting me to a friend who confidently denies the obvious. In its literal sense it also fits serious writing, such as an IELTS essay about relationships at work; keep the joking use for friends.
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gaslight + person; be gaslighting + person; that's gaslighting; feel gaslit
- he keeps saying i never told him about the trip, i feel so gaslit
- my brother ate my cake and says i ate it myself, classic gaslighting lol
- She realised her manager was gaslighting her when colleagues remembered the meeting too.
What changed
First versionMy boss is doing gaslighting to me.
RevisionMy boss is gaslighting me.
Gaslight is a verb, and the person being manipulated comes straight after it, with no to. Thinking of it as an activity you “do” leads to doing gaslighting to me; what's needed is simply is gaslighting me.
Lying on its own isn't gaslighting. He lied about where he was is just a lie. He told me I had imagined our argument is gaslighting: he isn't disputing a fact, he's disputing your memory.
Your turn
He keeps telling me I never said things I clearly said, and now I'm starting to doubt my own memory. Is that ___?
Show the answer
gaslighting — The person denies things you definitely said, and you start to doubt your own memory: that's gaslighting. Gatekeeping means keeping people out of a hobby or not sharing information, and it has nothing to do with memory.
Describe a situation from a TV series or film in which one character gaslights another: say what they denied and use gaslighting or gaslight.
In the series, Tom kept gaslighting his sister: he denied ever borrowing her car and told her she had imagined lending it to him.
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