[Photo: Aljazeera]

Gaslighting – a word that describes behavior that manipulates the mind, is misleading, and downright deceitful – is the Merriam-Webster dictionary’s word of the year.

Searches for the word on Merriam-webster.com increased 1,740% in 2022 over the year before.

Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor-at-large said gaslighting, spent all of 2022 in the top 50 words looked up on Merriam-webster.com to earn word of the year status.

Last year’s pick was vaccine.