NEW YORK  — Merriam-Webster has chosen “gaslighting” as its word of the year for 2022. Lookups for “gaslighting” on the dictionary company's website increased this year by 1,740% over 2021.

Merriam-Webster's Peter Sokolowski tells The Associated Press exclusively ahead of Monday's unveiling that lookups were pervasive all year long. Typically there's a single event that drives searches.

The word refers to a form of psychological coercion. Merriam-Webster, chooses its word of the year based solely on data. Sokolowski and his team weed out evergreen words most commonly looked up to gauge which word received a significant bump over the year before.