From Wikipedia:
Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or in members of a targeted group, making them question their own memory, perception, and sanity. Using persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying, it attempts to destabilize the victim and delegitimize the victim's belief.
Instances may range from the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever occurred, up to the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorienting the victim. The term owes its origin to the 1938 Patrick Hamilton play Gaslight and its 1940 and 1944 film adaptations, in which a man dims the gas lights in his home and then persuades his wife that she is imagining the change.
Sociopaths and narcissists frequently use gaslighting tactics to abuse and undermine their victims. Sociopaths consistently transgress social mores, break laws and exploit others, but typically also are convincing liars, sometimes charming ones, who consistently deny wrongdoing. Thus, some who have been victimized by sociopaths may doubt their own perceptions. Some physically abusive spouses may gaslight their partners by flatly denying that they have been violent. Gaslighting may occur in parent–child relationships, with either parent, child, or both lying to the other and attempting to undermine perceptions.
An abuser's ultimate goal is to make their victim second guess their every choice and question their sanity, making them more dependent on the abuser. A tactic which further degrades a target's self-esteem is for the abuser to ignore, then attend to, then ignore the victim again, so that the victim lowers their personal bar for what constitutes affection and perceives themselves as less worthy of affection.
There are two characteristics of gaslighting: The abuser wants full control of feelings, thoughts, or actions of the victim; and the abuser discreetly emotionally abuses the victim in hostile, abusive, or coercive ways.
Signs of gaslighting include:
- Withholding information from victim;
- Countering information to fit the abuser's perspective;
- Discounting information;
- Verbal abuse, usually in the form of jokes;
- Blocking and diverting the victim's attention from outside sources;
- Trivializing the victim's worth; and,
- Undermining victim by gradually weakening them and their thought process.
Three most common methods of gaslighting are:
- Hiding: The abuser may hide things from the victim and cover up what they have done. Instead of feeling ashamed, the abuser may convince the victim to doubt their own beliefs about the situation and turn the blame on themselves.
- Changing: The abuser feels the need to change something about the victim. Whether it be the way the victim dresses or acts, they want the victim to mold into their fantasy. If the victim does not comply, the abuser may convince the victim that he or she is in fact not good enough.
- Control: The abuser may want to fully control and have power over the victim. In doing so, the abuser will try to seclude them from other friends and family so only they can influence the victim's thoughts and actions. The abuser gets pleasure from knowing the victim is being fully controlled by them.
From Merriam-Webster:
Hypocritically pious or devout
There's nothing sacred about "sanctimonious," but in the early 1600s, the English adjective was still used to describe someone truly holy or pious (a sense that recalls the meaning of the word's Latin parent, sanctimonia). Shakespeare used both the "holy" and "holier-than-thou" senses in his work, referring in The Tempest to the "sanctimonious" (that is, "holy") ceremonies of marriage, and in Measure for Measure to describe "the sanctimonious pirate that went to sea with the Ten Commandments but scraped one out of the table." (Apparently, the pirate found the restriction on stealing a bit too inconvenient.)
From Wiktionary:
Unappetizingly flavorless.
Flat; lacking character or definition.
Cloyingly sweet or sentimental.
From Vocabulary.com:
1. lacking interest or significance or impact
2. lacking taste or flavor or tang
Insipid comes from the Latin insipidus, the opposite of sapidus which means flavorful. The most common use of the word is in a metaphorical sense for dull or flat.
From Wikipedia:
In the feudal system, the demesne was all the land which was retained by a lord of the manor for his own use and occupation or support, under his own management, as distinguished from land sub-enfeoffed by him to others as sub-tenants. In England, royal demesne is the land held by the Crown, and ancient demesne is the legal term for the land held by the king at the time of the Domesday Book.
In this feudal system the demesne was all the land retained under his own management by a lord of the manor for his own use and support. It was not necessarily all contiguous to the manor house. A portion of the demesne lands, called the lord's waste, served as public roads and common pasture land for the lord and his tenants. Most of the remainder of the land in the manor was sub-enfeoffed by the lord to others as sub-tenants.
Immediately following the Norman Conquest of 1066, all land in England was claimed by King William the Conqueror as his absolute title by allodial right, being the commencement of the royal demesne, also known as Crown land. The king made grants of very large parcels of land under various forms of feudal tenure from his demesne, generally in the form of feudal baronies. The land not so enfeoffed, for example royal manors administered by royal stewards and royal hunting forests, thus remained within the royal demesne. In the Domesday Book of 1086, this land is referred to as terra regis (literally "the king's land"), and in English common law the term ancient demesne refers to the land that was held by the Crown at the time of the Domesday Book.
The royal demesne was not a static portfolio: it could be increased, for example, as a result of escheat or forfeiture where a feudal tenure would end and revert to its natural state in the royal demesne, or it could be reduced by later grants of land. During the reign of King George III (1760–1820), Parliament appropriated most of the royal demesne, in exchange for a fixed annual sum thenceforth payable to the monarch, called the Civil List. The position of the royal estate of Windsor, still occupied by the monarch and never alienated since 1066, may be a rare remnant of the royal demesne.
Since the demesne surrounded the principal seat of the lord, it came to be loosely used of any proprietary territory: "the works of Shakespeare are this scholar's demesne."
From Wiktionary:
Etymology 1
From Latin cantÅ probably via Old Northern French canter (“sing, tell”). Doublet of chant.
(noun)An argot, the jargon of a particular class or subgroup.
A private or secret language used by a religious sect, gang, or other group.
Empty, hypocritical talk.
Whining speech, such as that used by beggars.
A blazon of a coat of arms that makes a pun upon the name (or, less often, some attribute or function) of the bearer, canting arms.
A call for bidders at a public fair; an auction.
Etymology 2
From Middle English cant (“edge, brink”), from Middle Dutch cant (“point, side, edge”) (Modern Dutch kant (“side, edge”)), ultimately of Celtic or Latin origin. Related to Medieval Latin cantus (“corner, side”), from Latin canthus.
(noun)Side, edge, corner, niche.
Slope, the angle at which something is set
A corner (of a building).
An outer or external angle.
An inclination from a horizontal or vertical line; a slope or bevel; a tilt.
A movement or throw that overturns something.
A sudden thrust, push, kick, or other impulse, producing a bias or change of direction; also, the bias or turn so given.
A segment forming a side piece in the head of a cask. (coopering)
A segment of the rim of a wooden cogwheel.
A piece of wood laid upon the deck of a vessel to support the bulkheads. (nautical)
Etymology 3
From Middle English, presumably from Middle Low German kant
(adjective) lively, lusty, hearty, merry.
