"... Imhof's grave illness might also have been tinged with Schadenfreude..."
I've been a slacking off on posting the Word(s) of the Day, and I'm especially remiss for letting schadenfreude slip by.
Word of the Day for Thursday May 29, 2008
schadenfreude \SHOD-n-froy-duh\, noun:
A malicious satisfaction obtained from the misfortunes of others.
That the report of Sebastian Imhof's grave illness might also have been tinged with Schadenfreude appears not to have crossed Lucas's mind.
-- Steven Ozment, Flesh and Spirit
He died three years after me -- cancer too -- and at that time I was still naive enough to imagine that what the afterlife chiefly provided were unrivalled opportunities for unbeatable gloating, unbelievable schadenfreude.
-- Will Self, How The Dead Live
Somewhere out there, Pi supposed, some UC Berkeley grad students must be shivering with a little Schadenfreude of their own about what had happened to her.
-- Sylvia Brownrigg, The Metaphysical Touch
The historian Peter Gay -- who felt Schadenfreude as a Jewish child in Nazi-era Berlin, watching the Germans lose coveted gold medals in the 1936 Olympics -- has said that it "can be one of the great joys of life."
-- Edward Rothstein, "Missing the Fun of a Minor Sin", New York Times, February 5, 2000
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Schadenfreude comes from the German, from Schaden, "damage" + Freude, "joy." It is often capitalized, as it is in German.
(Ed. In German class "Schaden" was a very complex concept as it pertained to schadenfreude. It meant misfortune, pitiable happenstance, hardship... it was a bigger spiritual/psychological harm than the literal translation would suggest. It was most concisely translated by my first German teacher as "taking joy in the misfortunes of others" but it didn't have the same mean-spirited edge as we would associate with sadists or sociopaths. It had more smugness than cruelty.)
Word of the Day for Thursday May 29, 2008
schadenfreude \SHOD-n-froy-duh\, noun:
A malicious satisfaction obtained from the misfortunes of others.
That the report of Sebastian Imhof's grave illness might also have been tinged with Schadenfreude appears not to have crossed Lucas's mind.
-- Steven Ozment, Flesh and Spirit
He died three years after me -- cancer too -- and at that time I was still naive enough to imagine that what the afterlife chiefly provided were unrivalled opportunities for unbeatable gloating, unbelievable schadenfreude.
-- Will Self, How The Dead Live
Somewhere out there, Pi supposed, some UC Berkeley grad students must be shivering with a little Schadenfreude of their own about what had happened to her.
-- Sylvia Brownrigg, The Metaphysical Touch
The historian Peter Gay -- who felt Schadenfreude as a Jewish child in Nazi-era Berlin, watching the Germans lose coveted gold medals in the 1936 Olympics -- has said that it "can be one of the great joys of life."
-- Edward Rothstein, "Missing the Fun of a Minor Sin", New York Times, February 5, 2000
_______________________________
Schadenfreude comes from the German, from Schaden, "damage" + Freude, "joy." It is often capitalized, as it is in German.
(Ed. In German class "Schaden" was a very complex concept as it pertained to schadenfreude. It meant misfortune, pitiable happenstance, hardship... it was a bigger spiritual/psychological harm than the literal translation would suggest. It was most concisely translated by my first German teacher as "taking joy in the misfortunes of others" but it didn't have the same mean-spirited edge as we would associate with sadists or sociopaths. It had more smugness than cruelty.)