谭词｜2022年度词汇：韦氏选了啥？

英语世界

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11月28日，韦氏词典（Merriam-Webster）公布了2022年度词汇：Gaslighting（煤气灯效应）。

煤气灯效应，又称煤气灯探戈、煤气灯操纵，描述的是一种心理操控手段，指对受害者施加的情感虐待和操控，受害者深受施害者操控，以至于怀疑自己的记忆、感知或理智，并逐渐丧失自尊，产生自我怀疑，无法逃脱。这一概念最早起源于1938年的话剧《煤气灯》，首次受到关注来自20世纪初根据话剧改编的电影《煤气灯下》。2007年，心理学家罗宾·斯特恩（Robin Stern）结合20年的临床经验出版了《煤气灯效应：远离情感暴力和操纵狂》。该书出版后，煤气灯效应被广泛运用于心理学（尤其是临床心理学）领域，后不断延伸扩展到哲学、政治学（政治评论）等领域。

以下为美联社的相关报道——

‘Gaslighting’ ：Merriam-Webster’s word of 2022

Gaslighting：韦氏词典2022年度词汇

From: AP NEWS

来源：美联社新闻

“Gaslighting” — mind manipulating, grossly misleading, downright deceitful — is Merriam-Webster’s word of the year.

gaslighting（煤气灯效应）是韦氏词典今年的年度词汇，指的是操纵思想、严重误导、彻头彻尾的欺骗行为。

Lookups for the word on merriam-webster.com increased 1,740% in 2022 over the year before. But something else happened. There wasn’t a single event that drove significant spikes in the curiosity, as it usually goes with the chosen word of the year.

在韦氏词典网站上，这个词的搜索量在2022年比上一年增加了1740%。但还有其他事情发生。这次与往年选择年度词汇不同，并不是一个单一事件导致了好奇心显著增强。

The gaslighting was pervasive.

煤气灯效应无处不在。

“It’s a word that has risen so quickly in the English language, and especially in the last four years, that it actually came as a surprise to me and to many of us,” said Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor at large, in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press ahead of Monday’s unveiling.

韦氏词典的特约编辑彼得·索科洛夫斯基在周一公布年度词汇前接受了美联社的独家采访，他说：“这个词在英语中崛起得如此之快，尤其是过去四年，让我们很多人都感到惊讶。”

“It was a word looked up frequently every single day of the year,” he said.

“这个单词这一年每天都被频繁查询。”他说。

There were deepfakes and the dark web. There were deep states and fake news. And there was a whole lot of trolling.

有深度伪造和暗网，有深层状态和假新闻，还有很多喷子。

Merriam-Webster’s top definition for gaslighting is the psychological manipulation of a person, usually over an extended period of time, that “causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one’s emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator.”

韦氏词典对“煤气灯效应”的主要定义是对一个人的心理操纵，通常持续很长一段时间，“导致受害者质疑自己的思想、对现实的感知或记忆的可靠性，通常导致困惑、信心和自尊的丧失、情绪或精神的不稳定，以及对施暴者的依赖”。

Gaslighting is a heinous tool frequently used by abusers in relationships — and by politicians and other newsmakers. It can happen between romantic partners, within a broader family unit and among friends. It can be a corporate tactic, or a way to mislead the public. There’s also “medical gaslighting,” when a health care professional dismisses a patient’s symptoms or illness as “all in your head.”

煤气灯效应是施虐者经常使用的令人发指的工具，政客和其他新闻人物也经常使用。它可能发生在恋人之间，更广泛的家庭内部和朋友之间。这可能是公司的策略，也可能是误导公众的一种方式。还有“医疗煤气灯效应”，指的是医疗保健专业人员将病人的症状或疾病归结为“全是你的幻觉”。

Despite its relatively recent prominence — including “Gaslighter,” The Chicks’ 2020 album featuring the rousingly angry titular single — the word was brought to life more than 80 years ago with “Gas Light,” a 1938 play by Patrick Hamilton.

尽管这个词流行起来相对较晚——包括 The Chicks 乐队2020年的专辑Gaslighter，其中收录了令人亢奋的同名单曲——但这个词80多年前就在帕特里克·汉密尔顿1938年的戏剧 GasLight 中被赋予了生命。

It birthed two film adaptations in the 1940s. One, George Cukor’s “Gaslight” in 1944, starred Ingrid Bergman as Paula Alquist and Charles Boyer as Gregory Anton. The two marry after a whirlwind romance and Gregory turns out to be a champion gaslighter. Among other instances, he insists her complains over the constant dimming of their London townhouse’s gaslights is a figment of her troubled mind. It wasn’t.

1940年代，它催生了两部改编电影。其中一部是1944年乔治·库克的《煤气灯下》，英格丽·褒曼饰演宝拉·阿尔奎斯特，查尔斯·博耶饰演格雷戈里·安东。两人在旋风式恋爱后结婚，后来格雷戈里被发现在别有用心地利用煤气灯。其中一个例子是，宝拉抱怨他们伦敦别墅的煤气灯总是变暗，他坚持认为这都是她心烦意乱的臆想。然而事实并非如此。

The death of Angela Lansbury in October drove some interest in lookups of the word, Sokolowski said. She played Nancy Oliver, a young maid hired by Gregory and told not to bother his “high-strung” wife.

索科洛夫斯基说，10月安吉拉·兰斯伯里的去世引发了人们大量搜索这个词。她在片中饰演了南希·奥利弗，格雷戈里雇用的年轻女仆，并被告知不要打扰他“神经质”的妻子。

The term gaslighting was later used by mental health practitioners to clinically describe a form of prolonged coercive control in abusive relationships.

“煤气灯效应”一词后来被心理健康从业者用来临床描述虐待关系中一种长期的强制控制形式。

“There is this implication of an intentional deception,” Sokolowski said. “And once one is aware of that deception, it’s not just a straightforward lie, as in, you know, I didn’t eat the cookies in the cookie jar. It’s something that has a little bit more devious quality to it. It has possibly an idea of strategy or a long-term plan.”

索科洛夫斯基说：“这意味着故意欺骗。一旦一个人意识到这种欺骗，它就不仅仅是一个简单的谎言，就像，你知道，我没有吃饼干罐里的饼干。这是一种更具欺骗性的东西。它可能是一种策略想法或长期计划。”

Merriam-Webster, which logs 100 million pageviews a month on its site, chooses its word of the year based solely on data. Sokolowski and his team weed out evergreen words most commonly looked up to gauge which word received a significant bump over the year before.

韦氏词典网站每月的网页浏览量达到1亿次，选择年度词汇完全基于数据。索科洛夫斯基和他的团队剔除了最常被查阅的常青词汇，以判断哪些词汇比前一年的使用量大幅增加。

They don’t slice and dice why people look up words, which can be anything from quick spelling and definition checks to some sort of attempt at inspiration or motivation. Some of the droves who looked up “gaslighting” this year might have wanted to know, simply, if it’s one or two words, or whether it’s hyphenated.

他们不会对人们查单词的原因一概而论，人们可能是为了快速检查拼写和定义，也可能是受到某种灵感或动机的激发。今年查过 gaslighting 的人中，可能有些只是想知道，这是一个词还是两个词，或者中间是否有连字符。

“Gaslighting,” Sokolowski said, spent all of 2022 in the top 50 words looked up on merriam-webster.com to earn top dog word of the year status. Last year’s pick was “vaccine.” Rounding out this year’s Top 10 are:

索科洛夫斯基说，gaslighting 2022年一整年都位于韦氏词典网站搜索的前50个单词之列，并赢得了“年度热词”的称号。去年的年度词汇是 vaccine（疫苗）。排在今年前十的单词/词组还有：

— “Oligarch,” driven by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

oligarch（寡头政治家），受到俄乌冲突刺激。

— “Omicron,” the persistent COVID-19 variant and the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet.

omicron（奥密克戎），持续存在的新冠病毒变种、希腊字母表的第15个字母。

— “Codify,” as in turning abortion rights into federal law.

codify（编纂），比如把堕胎权变成联邦法律。

— “Queen consort,” what King Charles’ wife, Camilla is newly known as.

queen consort（英国王后），查尔斯国王的妻子卡米拉的新称呼。

— “Raid,” as in the search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.

raid（突袭），比如搜查美国前总统特朗普的海湖庄园。

— “Sentient,” with lookups brought on by Google canning the engineer who claimed an unreleased AI system had become sentient.