What does “gaslighting” mean these days? 10 words born out of the screen

Image: Ron Lach

Ever caught yourself rolling your eyes at "spam" or a "Debbie Downer"? Guess what —those aren't just words; they're pop culture legends that were screen-born. These 10 everyday terms started as TV or movie dialogue jewels and leaped into our conversations, becoming universal labels for both old and new ideas. Let’s see how many of these words started as plot-critical concepts —and stuck!

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Spam existed decades before the internet was even invented. Although back then it only referred to the pork-and-ham processed meat sold in cans (an abbreviation of "spiced ham"). The product had been circulating and consumed since 1937, when, in the 70s, the British group Monty Python made history with a sketch from their show Monty Python’s Flying Circus. It was about a bar catering to Vikings, where every dish included canned meat, prompting the servers and customers to chant "spam" repeatedly and annoyingly.

The sketch became so popular that the cultural reference stuck in people’s minds. By the time electronic mail was born —and with it, tons of unsolicited, junky, repetitive messages — people already knew what to use the word for.

Image: Brett Sayles

Even though intrusive journalists have been around for centuries, meddlesome photographers didn’t have a label until the 1960s. In Federico Fellini’s famous movie La Dolce Vita, there was an iconic character named Paparazzo. He was a freelance photographer who relentlessly followed celebrities to capture sensational images. His actions represented a new type of aggressive journalism that was emerging at the time, focused on capturing the private lives of public figures.

Over the years, Fellini revealed that he chose the name Paparazzo for the character because it sounded like a "buzzing insect, hovering, darting, stinging." The word is universally used today and even has the derivation "papped", for subjects that have been caught on camera by such photographers.

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By now, we are very used to new technologies swiftly becoming verbs. Even the Merriam-Webster dictionary accepts "DM" as a verb and a noun. There was a time, though, when the verbification of tech wasn’t so obvious. One of Google’s co-founders, Larry Page, first used the search engine’s name as a gerund in a 1998 mailing list, where he signed off: "Have fun and keep googling!"

However, the verb gained widespread popularity thanks to a 2002 episode of the famous show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In it, a character asked Buffy if she had "googled" someone: the new term confused the others in the room. While the verb was likely emerging in many people’s vocabulary simultaneously, that scene helped solidify it for the masses. The American Dialect Society proceeded to choose the verb "google" as the "most useful word of 2002."

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It was the show Saturday Night Live that conceived this character who would get along with "Negative Nancy" and "Bob Bummer." In an episode that aired in 2004, comedian Rachel Dratch portrayed Debbie Downer, a woman who went to Disney World with her friends but was incapable of feeling joy and instead kept bringing up depressing topics.

The character was introduced along with a mocking jingle explaining her influence on her social group. The sketch was so celebrated that it became a recurring series in SNL, and the expression caught on. "Downer" had been in the English lexicon since the 19th century, but the idea of attaching it to a name to trademark the pessimistic attitude happened entirely in the scriptwriters’ room.

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"Bucket list" has existed for decades to refer to unfinished business, or pending issues in ongoing projects. But it wasn’t until the 21st century that the term was given a new meaning for its association with the expression "kicking the bucket". A "bucket list" then came to signify a series of experiences a person wants to have within their lifetime.

The concept was popularized for the masses thanks to the success of the movie The Bucket List (2007). In it, the terminally-ill characters played by Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman teach the audience the value of fulfilling life’s wishes and whims. The touching concept then entered the vocabulary of millions around the world.

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Although previously used to refer to computers, the term "core memories" only began to apply to humans thanks to an animated movie. In Pixar’s Inside Out (2015), the memories inside a girl’s mind are illustrated as a colorful system of orbs. The most treasured of those are called "core memories" and are created whenever the girl lives a deeply moving experience that helps solidify her identity.

Since the movie’s release, "core memories" has become a popular phrase on the internet, where people share real or imagined experiences to refer to events that left lasting impressions on their psyche and personality.

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We now use "catfishing" as the name for a type of online fraud: cases of financial or romantic deceit, where a fake online persona is created to lure victims. But, have you ever wondered how catfish —the fish— became tangled with these affairs?

In 2010, a producer called Nev Schulman released a documentary showing how he had been tricked in this way. One of the men interviewed about the case compared the event with a fabled deception from the fishing industry: placing an "impostor" catfish in a tank full of cod during shipping. The idea gave the documentary its title, and eventually led to a reality TV show of the same name, further cementing the concept's fame.

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This is another expression that was once used informally in some social groups as slang. An early instance of its use was recorded in a 1956 interview with Louis Armstrong. However, it was in the ‘90s that the apologetic motto caught on massively. It’s believed that it became internationally widespread because of its casual inclusion in a scene from the 1995 movie Clueless. In it, the protagonist swerves in one of her first driving lessons, and softly apologizes with a quick "Oops! My bad!".

Although it has sparked debates over its grammatical correctness, "my bad" is now used in informal conversations as a synonym for "sorry" or "my fault."

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Funnily enough, it was the show Friends that popularized the concept of "the friend zone." In the middle of the first season, which aired in 1994 to an audience of roughly 24 million viewers, Joey explains to Ross that romantic relationships hardly ever evolve from long-standing friendships. He introduces the expression with: "You are in the friend zone. You are major of the zone."

The term was quickly adopted and later used in other popular media, such as books and movies. Eventually, the words were verbified and also transformed to refer to both parts of the equation: the "friendzoner" and the "friendzonee."

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This term, broadly used in psychology nowadays, originated in honor of Gas Light, a British play by Patrick Hamilton. In the play, a man attempts to manipulate his wife by slowly deceiving her and making her doubt her own mental sanity. One of his strategies is to dim the gas lights in their house little by little, but insisting that he hasn’t touched them when she accuses him.

This tactic, the most symbolic of the character’s actions, gave its name to the play and the subsequent 1944 film adaptation. The story became a classic example to illustrate this particular form of manipulation, which is now universally referred to as "gaslighting."

The word journey

10 words we borrowed from other languages

Just like a bride is traditionally given something "borrowed" on her wedding day, our everyday speech is full of words borrowed from other languages. We use them to describe everything from that café you love to the strange feeling that you’ve experienced something before, and even those irritating mosquitoes. Get ready for some big surprises as we uncover 10 words that have slipped into our vocabulary from other languages.

Here is a word that describes something we all use very often (or at least we hope so): "shampoo," which comes from the Hindi word chāmpo, which means "press" or "massage."

Originally, in 18th-century India, chāmpo referred to the practice of massaging the head and body, often with oils. British travelers encountered the practice in India and brought the word back to Britain in the 18th century. In English, its meaning gradually shifted from massage to the washing of the hair. Talk about a transformation.

"Zzzzzzzzzzzz"- the sound that can turn a peaceful night into an exercise in frustration. The term to describe this annoying fellow, mosquito, entered the English language from Spanish in the 16th century, meaning "little fly."It comes from Spanish mosca, meaning "fly," with the diminutive ending -ito, meaning "little."

Put them together, and you get a surprisingly cute name for one of nature’s most irritating creatures, making it a very tiny word for such a big annoyance.

Take another sip of your coffee before continuing your reading. The word café may look unmistakably French, but its linguistic journey is much longer. The French borrowed café to mean both coffee and the place where it is served. They got it from the Italian caffè, which was borrowed from Ottoman Turkish kahve. That word ultimately traces back to Arabic qahwa, a word associated with coffee and possibly with an older term for wine or another stimulating drink.

Eventually, café came to refer not only to the drink but also to the places where people gathered to enjoy it. Today, it can mean a coffee shop, a small restaurant, or simply a place to sit, sip, and watch the world go by. Without a doubt, this seems to be a very sexy word everyone wants to say, no matter the location or the moment in time.

Do you like where you live? How would you describe it? If your idea of the perfect home includes one story, plenty of fresh air, and perhaps a welcoming porch, you already know the word: bungalow. The word comes from Hindi bangla, meaning "Bengalese," referring to a house built in the style of Bengal.

The term was used in Anglo-Indian English by the late 17th century to describe low, often thatched one-story houses with verandas. Eventually, both the word and the architectural style traveled far beyond India. All the way from Bengal straight to your backyard.

It’s a bizarre feeling; there’s no doubt about that, but chances are you’ve experienced it: that uncanny sensation that what is happening right now has somehow happened before. Déjà vu is a French loanword that literally translates to "already seen." It describes the feeling that a present situation is strangely familiar, even though you know you haven’t experienced it before.

The expression entered English around 1903, after becoming established in French discussions of the strange sensation. Today, it remains one of those wonderfully useful expressions for a feeling that is difficult to explain in just a few English words. Have you ever had that feeling at all?

If you like surprises, you’re in for a good one. This word has opposing meanings intertwined in its origin. The word piano comes from the Italian word pianoforte, which roughly means "soft-loud": piano means soft, while forte means loud.

The instrument was originally named gravicembalo col piano e forte by Bartolomeo Cristofori, who developed the instrument around 1700. Unlike earlier keyboard instruments, it allowed players to control the volume by varying how hard they struck the keys. The name eventually became simply piano. A name born from two opposing sounds: soft and loud.

Swahili might sound like a very distant language, but you definitely know the Lion King song "Hakuna Matata," and yes, you guessed it, it comes from Swahili (and it means "no worries"). The word "safari" also comes from Swahili, and it means "journey" or "trip." It ultimately comes from the Arabic safar, meaning "journey" or "travel."

English eventually adopted safari as a word for an expedition, especially one involving travel through Africa, and today, we most often associate it with wildlife viewing. Not every safari involves a lion (unless you want it to).

We all know Italians are famous for bringing a certain flair to food, music, art, and life. And one Italian word captures that spirit beautifully: gusto. Gusto is borrowed from Italian gusto, meaning "taste," and English uses it to describe enthusiastic enjoyment, energy, or relish. An example of how to use it could be: "She sang the song with great gusto."

The Italian word ultimately comes from Latin gustus, meaning "a tasting," making it a little word with a lot of enthusiasm.

Karaoke nights definitely aren’t for the faint-hearted, but for those of you brave enough to sing your heart out in front of friends and strangers, let's look at how we came to say it. The word karaoke literally translates from Japanese as "empty orchestra."

Here is the surprising part: the Japanese word itself contains a shortened form of the English word "orchestra." Kara means "empty," while oke comes from ōkesutora, the Japanese adaptation of "orchestra." This makes karaoke a fascinating example of wasei-eigo, which are Japanese words or expressions created using English elements. English later borrowed the finished word right back. It seems like English went to Japan and came back again singing.

The word tsunami comes from the Japanese words tsu (meaning harbor) and nami (meaning wave). In other words (since we are talking about words), it literally means "harbor wave." It reflects how these waves can have devastating effects when they reach coastal areas and harbors.

The term first appeared in English texts around September 1896 in National Geographic Magazine to describe a devastating wave striking Japan. Curiously, English speakers usually drop the initial "t" sound, pronouncing it sunami instead of the strict Japanese tsunami, because English does not naturally start words with a "ts" sound.