[Ads-l] Facebookery: "Sally refuses to be _gaslit_."

Ben Zimmer bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM
Fri Jan 13 03:47:26 UTC 2017


In a post yesterday I shared a 1965 episode of "Gomer Pyle: USMC" that (for
now) counts as the earliest verifiable use of the verb "gaslight," and
there they use "gaslit," not "gaslighted."

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2017-January/145895.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnKkE0nrZx4 at 17:35
Duke: Oh, he was gaslit all right. If anyone was gaslit it was him.

It's remarkable that "gaslighting" was considered common enough knowledge
by then that it didn't require an explanation tying it back to the movie,
and it's equally remarkable that the verb had already taken on the
irregular morphology of "gaslit" for the past tense / past participle.

On Thu, Jan 12, 2017 at 8:15 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> I prefer _gaslighted_, but...
>
> Youneverknow.
>
> I grew up in the home of the Laclede Gas-Light Company, so...
>
>

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