@Houl Gaslighting is the subjective experience of having one's reality repeatedly questioned by an authority figure. A colloquialism, the term derives from the title of the 1944 American film Gaslight, which was based on the 1938 British theatre play Gas Light by Patrick Hamilton, though the term did not gain popular currency in English until the mid-2010s. A 2022 Washington Post report described it as a "trendy buzzword" that is "often used incorrectly by people referring to simple disagreements [...] that don’t meet gaslighting’s historical definition", leading to expert concerns about the term becoming diluted.