Called out my sister for saying 'gaslighting' wrong, then looked it up and I was the one wrong

She kept using it to mean just lying about something small, and I told her that's not what it is. I was all confident about it until I actually read a few articles on psychology sites and found out the term has evolved a lot in casual use. Turns out people use it for smaller manipulation now, not just the extreme clinical version. I had to text her back and admit I was being the annoying word cop for no reason. Made me wonder how many other buzzwords I'm confidently correcting people on that I don't fully understand. Anyone else ever had to eat crow over a term you thought you had nailed down?

3 comments

3 Comments

grant_allen8520d ago

Yeah I heard a linguist on a podcast say words just change meaning over time whether we like it or not.

kim81920d ago

Yeah but a linguist on a podcast isn't the same as a rule book, @grant_allen85. Words shift because people use them differently in real life, not because one expert says so on a show. Take "literally" for example, it's been used as an intensifier for centuries and nobody's been able to stop it.

paige8620d ago

Well that oversimplifies how much people actually push back on changes though.