Writes my son John, at Facebook, commenting on a Snopes post about its article "Did People Refer to Gaslighting During the Era of ‘I Love Lucy’? A stray piece of dialogue from the 2021 biopic 'Being the Ricardos' set off a fascinating online debate about a cultural anachronism."
It is possible that Ball, in 1953, might have improvised or riffed off existing phrases like “the Gaslight treatment” and said to Arnaz “Don’t gaslight me.” However, based on the best documentary and archival evidence available, it is simply not plausible in that form, and [the] objection to the line is well-founded.
The idea that people today have more verbal fluidity is left unexamined. I think people decades ago had better verbal skills. Study the history of language. It's not something kids thought up recently, this device of making a noun into a verb. There's even a Greek word for it:
In rhetoric, anthimeria or antimeria (from Greek: ἀντί, antí, 'against, opposite', and μέρος, méros, 'part'), means using one part of speech as another, such as using a noun as a verb: "The little old lady turtled along the road." In linguistics, this is called conversion; when a noun becomes a verb, it is a denominal verb, when a verb becomes a noun, it is a deverbal noun.
In English, many nouns have become verbs. For example, the noun "book" is now often used as a verb, as in the example "Let's book the flight". Other noun-as-verb usages include "I can keyboard that for you," "We need to scissor expenses," and "Desk him." Other substitutions could include an adjective used as a noun, as in "She dove into the foaming wet," interjection as verb, as in "Don't aha me!" a verb as a noun, as in "Help! I need some eat!" and so on....
Yes, poets and comics and other clever writers do this parts-of-speech switcheroo all the time. To think Lucy wouldn't or couldn't do it is downright insulting.
ADDED: The OED has an entry for "gaslight," the verb. Its earliest written usage is the 1961 occurrence that is in the Snopes piece:
A. S. C. Wallace Culture & Personality 183 It is also popularly believed to be possible to ‘gaslight’ a perfectly healthy person into psychosis by interpreting his own behavior to him as symptomatic of serious mental illness.
The seriousness of that publication and the way its written suggest that the verb was already in use, and indeed, the OED includes this note:
J. E. Lighter Hist. Dict. Amer. Slang (1994) I. 868/1 records an oral use from 1956.
1956 is the year "I Love Lucy" had the parody of "Gaslight."
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Those examples are terrible... I've never heard "desk" or "keyboard" used as a verb. And "scissor", well...
"We need to scissor!" she cried, and "Desk her." screamed the crowd, as "She dove into the foaming wet..
English is inherently flexible and fluid so invites expansion. But it certainly seems that our era is much more narrowing and restrictive, with a lot of words being cooped and dissolved into shared meaning. How many words do we need for homosexual? And the policing of public language is as bad as it ever has been, but it's just a different list than the 7 naughties.
Snopes is a joke. Nobody takes them seriously anymore. But, yes, it only takes a minimum effort for a writer or editor to turn something that sounds anachronistic into something that people don't flinch at. If Lucy had said, "Don't give me the gaslight treatment," some nitpickers might object, but they could have been more easily proved wrong.
It would help to put this in context if you consider these lines from the recent adaptation of Jane Austen's Persuasion:
Anne: Because he is a ten. I never trust a ten.
A "Ten" in the present day sense of rating men or women on a one to ten scale according to their looks. I think the phrase started being used in California sometime towards the end of the last century.
The nitpickers are on the warpath now. It doesn't take too much effort not to make oneself a target. But Hollywood doesn't make the effort.
The earliest known example of "gaslighting" is Anna O. (Bertha Pappenheim). Breuer and Freud never actually convinced her that her hysterical symptoms had anything to do with incestuous desires for her father, but Freud did manage to convince his followers and, of course, himself of the truth of his observations. The case history as he presented it was fraudulent. The gaslighting phenomenon is more apt to deceive the old gaslighter than the young gaslit.
Snopes is just like modern journalism, i.e. they are lazy about research and want the quick, easy answer which aligns with their biases.
Althouse does a better (and more succinct) "fact-check" than Snopes -- which is not surprising, as the latter is sloppy and beset by unacknowledged bias at best; and deliberately deceitful at worst.
My experience with Snopes is that it plays a bit loose with its credibility. The idea that gaslighting wasn’t a thing when gaslights were ubiquitous is silly.
The 1944 movie is a remake of a 1940 movie (with a slightly different plot), which was based on an earlier stage play (and according to IMDB there is a television version from 1939). My point is there was plenty of time for the concept of "gaslighting" to make it into the common parlance, especially among Hollywood types with access to versions of old tv and movies.
The current version of gaslighting is turning Jefferson and Madison historical homes into a woke, CRT indoctrination centers while telling people that there is no such thing as a culture war.
Snopes like many persons lately have problems understanding post hoc ergo proper hoc and causality in general.Check apparently any logic.
@Lurker21 - The movie 10 starring Bo Derek as a woman who is a ten came out in 1979. I don't know about beforehand but afterward the term was firmly fixed in the American language.
"Snopes is a joke. Nobody takes them seriously anymore."
Really? Based on what data? Does "nobody tak(ing) them seriously anymore," (assuming you are correct, but one shouldn't assume, right?), prove in itself they are a joke, or suffice to invalidate their examination of whatever questions are put to them?
Do you have any studies that can, with reasonable accuracy, show, one, that "nobody takes them seriously anymore," or, two, they are a joke?
I don't refer to Snopes currently, though I have occasionally done so in the past, so I can't gauge how well or badly they are considered today--or by whom--and I don't know how accurate are their analyses. However, a declarative judgement such as yours does call for some backup, yes?
What did socialists use before electric lighting?
The 1 to 10 looks scale was very well known in the early-to-mid-70s.
I remember this because one evening some geniuses in my dorm thought it'd be clever to hold up numbered rating cards as each female resident entered the dining area. After a few minutes a couple of us approached them and, ahem, persuaded them this was definitely not a good idea.
The movie "Ten" with Bo Derek was released in 1979.
Stupid Clucks! You can’t Clucking turn “Cluck” into a Clucked version of Clucking. Only Clucking Clucks can Cluck Up something that so Clucking obvious.
The word verb is a noun, it too can be changed into a verb, as in "Snopes said Lucy didn't verb gaslight".
You want verbal anachronisms? Then Mrs. Maisel is your show of shows.
But it's not just the locutions. It's the ahistorical references. From Lenny Bruce to Sylvia Plath, the show is painful--as if taking place in its own snow globe of Chinese menu references--for people who know better but keep watching because of its star. (But oy, don't get me started on its embedded antisemitism.)
Snopes, the self-appointed trailer-trash arbiter of Fact and Fiction. I'll go with Lucy, who was sharp as a tack - she knew what she was doing. Snopes:
"The idea that people today have more verbal fluidity is left unexamined. I think people decades ago had better verbal skills"
Snopes has obviously never seen one of the 1930s/40s movies with musicians prominent. What comes to mind for me is Keenan Wynn in 'Song of the Thin Man' (1947). Also, they play up the 'hip talk' in 'The Bachelor and the Bobbysoxer'.
Snopes should have stuck with debunking urban legends. They provided a service for gullible people. Now they just perpetuate left wing biases. I rate Snopes mostly false.
" I think people decades ago had better verbal skills. "
Better vocabulary. That's true for educated people. Better verbal skills? Not sure.'
Gaslight is still not very commonlyy used, but the current use of "doing what the speaker thinks is lying for what the speaker thinks is a bad purpose" is quite recent, maybe 10 years.
Ngram shows flatline use until 2005 and without question people weren't using it in that form. Doesn't much matter, but yes it's anachronistic.
I don't think my wife or I had heard the term, "gaslighting" back in the late 1980's when we rented the movie. We both immediately started using the term with each other from then on.
What amused us, many years later, when the term became popular--was the certainty that a huge fraction of the people using it, had no idea of it's original source.
Saw your headlight, at a glance saw "[Scopes] verdict", and started wondering if you were going to make excuses for some new anti-evolution law.
Lucy was a genius...not only the funniest woman ever but in the conversation for funniest person ever...she was unquestionably smart.
“ The movie "Ten" with Bo Derek was released in 1979.”
And immediately gave rise to the joke,
Q: What is 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, ...
A: Bo Derek getting older.
Snopes, like other things, took it's narrow utility and decided to use it's earlier credibility, to expand to areas where it didn't have the same credibility.
My son takes keyboarding in school. Typing is so 20th century.
Once again, modern hubris assumes we are smarter, more creative and innovative than we were years ago.
My mother told me not to gaslight her sometime in the late 50's. We had watched the movie on TV so I knew what she meant. I was trying to convince her my brother and I had not eaten some food in the refrigerator. In fact we hadn't, it turned out a couple of runaways from the facility for delinquents my father worked at were hiding in the attic of our large Victorian house and they had taken the food while everyone was out during the day. Later that day, my father discovered them because our dog was trying to get up to the attic. I remember the whole day pretty well because it's my only memory of my mother apologizing to me.
Re: Robert Cook:
I don't refer to Snopes currently, though I have occasionally done so in the past, so I can't gauge how well or badly they are considered today
I do look to Snopes from time to time, although as with all self-anointed "fact checkers," I now do so with some healthy skepticism. Snopes has issues beyond just the accuracy of its fact checks, e.g. last year they ended up retracting sixty articles by their founder and CEO because they were all plagiarised. Doesn't mean they were necessarily inaccurate, but it does call into question their basic quality control and internal ethical culture.
There have been other incidents (e.g. when Biden was accused of checking his watch multiple times during a ceremony transferring bodies of dead soldiers) where Snopes' initial factcheck had to be updated because it was sloppy and inaccurate. To some extent, the original inaccurate rating ("mixed," when it was actually "true") may have reflected the prejudices of the author. Snopes was certainly not alone in exonerating Biden, but the authors of those various media "fact checks" got bombarded on Twitter with videos and images of Biden repeatedly checking his watch at various times during and after the ceremony and were eventually shamed into updating their ratings (although look at USA Today's sad attempt to save face with the classic "missing context" dodge). This is a pretty minor one, but the lack of rigor in this factcheck calls into question the overall reliability of the ratings elsewhere.
This kind of wordplay has been going on for a very long time.
Prime example:
"But me no buts."
I don't know why anyone would rate anything Snopes says as legitimate in the first place.
Ship.
Which came first, the noun or the verb?
I was going to mention all those plagiarized articles that were deleted. Or the other legal, financial and personal imbroglios that the founder has been involved in. Or the habit of "fact checking" obviously satirical articles from the Babylon Bee.
Here is an article from Forbes by a reporter who wanted to believe the best about Snopes but came to question their practices. Here is a relatively unbiased critique of Snopes.com. And here is a more pointed, freestyle critique. Another article comparing two similar cases that Snopes treated differently.
If you want to know about Big Foot or the Loch Ness Monster, Snopes might be a valuable myth-busting site. When it comes to politics, they're less reliable. One problem is that they really don't do very much independent research. If they can find one big media article that supports another big media article from a different outlet they run with that as verification. The larger problem with Snopes and other self-anointed fact checkers is that they are looking for the grain of truth that makes a largely false statement they agree with true and the grain of falsehood that makes a largely true statement that they disagree with false.
Education Realist said: "Better vocabulary. That's true for educated people. Better verbal skills? Not sure."
Few watch neenew Neflix movies yll gree they doan pnounce swell say usta.
Credit where credit is due, "Fuck!" and "Motherfucker!" - which may constitute 20% or more of the dialogue - seem always to be clearly enunciated.
When Snopes has lost John Althouse Cohen you know they are doomed.
You're son should learn that only suckers rely on Snopes for information. It took so long because they've been telling him what he wants to hear for years.
Yeah, Snopes is a thing, but the fact check opinion was written by a human being. Name the perp.
The villain should always be named in news stories.
The 1941 song “Jump for Joy” by Duke Ellington uses ‘groovy,’ which is practically THE word of the 1960s, and it uses it just like someone would have used it in 1967. So it was around long before it was in common use. If you set a movie in the late 30s or early 40s and it was employed by jazz musicians, it would be idiomatic and make sense. If you made a movie set in 1955 and it was used by a housewife or a farm worker, you could make the case that it was not (technically) an anachronism, but surely it would yank the viewers briefly out of the movie. Haven’t seen the Lucy & Desi movie but the cost benefit analysis I’d run would be: is the speed of getting the concept across worth the half second distraction of hearing this common 21st Century phrase in the mouth of Lucille Ball in the mid-fifties? It’s certainly not crazy to think she could have said it.
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