Mea Culpa: Has ‘gaslighting’ lost all meaning?

Questions of style and usage in last week’s Independent

Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman in the psychological thriller ‘Gaslight’ (Rex)

The verb “to gaslight” is enjoying a vogue on social media, but fortunately does not appear in our pages often. I think it an unpleasant and unhelpful phrase, suggesting that someone is trying to fool people into thinking that things are not as they are, like the murderous husband in the 1944 film Gaslight, who tried to make his wife think she was going mad. It implies both malice on the part of the gaslighter and victimhood on the part of the gaslightee.

So I was surprised that in a comment article Munira Mirza, the director of the No 10 policy unit who is overseeing a commission on racial inequality, was described as “Boris’s gaslighter-in-chief”. Is this supposed to mean that she has the power to persuade members of ethnic minorities that they are not discriminated against when they are, or is it just a fashionable term of abuse? Better for a writer just to spell out where they disagree with her and why.

Review of prepositions: Several times last week we referred to a “review into” something. We mentioned the independent review “into” the Windrush scandal. We reported on the government’s review “into” the two metre social distancing guideline, and we had a couple of references to the Rugby Football Union’s review “into” the history of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”, the song sung by England supporters.