Ahhh Gaslight: First seen at age 12, deeply in love with Ingrid Bergman since... which brings us back to the Five Fame etc.
Are there other Verbs?
I offer "To Psycho" as the obvious
The whole genre of the female gothic/suspecting one's husband of crime is great. "Rebecca" being the other classic in this mode.
Agree: "Dial M for Murder" is part of the same, as is "Jane Eyre". Related but not quite identical would be the "Woman in White." Which for pure horror potential gets my vote.
Fair 'nough. *puts pipe into jacket pocket and looks into the middle distance*
Well, in my house, there's "Porky Piggin' it," which is the act of walking around with a shirt on, but nothing below the waist.
w-lfs-n, why no other verbs? You E-Prime-Prime?
Hmm...I tend to think that E-prime-prime would fight the presumption of identity and permanence of nouns.
"I have a memory of a thing which at the time resembled a largish rock, though what it may resemble now I cannot know, nevertheless, if you happen upon it, take a left. "
"I seem to be wearing something that at the present time resembes a nice shirt. I might purchase it, but I have no assurance it would still resemble the same shirt, or even any kind of shirt at all, or even that I could still wear the shirt provided it remained the same, once I left the store."
In the above, "I" of course was used merely as a conventionalism, and not as a transcendental signifier, or even a plain ol' signifier.
As if you know whether or not you've purchased the shirt previously. Geez.
I'm a nihilist—I go further.
I nihilist. Mine further.
Bitch.
So is "we're nihilists, we go further" from something? I think maybe one of Razumikhin's acquaintances says something like that in Crime & Punishment. I dearly want two things: one, that it should be a literary reference, and two, a t-shirt with the Avis logo and pin on it, but instead of "we try harder" in the pin it would have the above tag. Too bad Avis seems to have dropped the "we're number two" part.
What's L&O?
I was a (*shudder*) big fan of soap operas back in junior high, and gaslighting happens all the time on soaps, so I saw the word in publications like Soap Opera Digest and Soap Opera Update.
There exists a "Soap Opera Digest?" Wow. Now this IS education.
Or should that read:
Exists "Soap Opera Digest" - Education.
Either way I need further and better particulars. Full language version preferred. I was a Physicist and can't get my head around linguistics.
Ben: You could try finding it in Conrad - "Under Western Eyes"
Are there no Steely Dan fans here? Have you never heard the song "Gaslighting Abbie"?
It appears that The Idiot contains "Educated men, learned men even, are to be found among Nihilists; these go further, in that they are men of action", but I haven't read The Idiot.