This German word is used as a loanword in English and sometimes in other languages. Philosopher and sociologist Theodor Adorno defined schadenfreude as “largely unanticipated delight in the suffering of another which is cognized as trivial and/or appropriate.”Usage: "I felt a bit of Schadenfreude at discovering a web site which allows people who voted for Obama to apologize to the world." (I am Sorry I Voted for Obama!)
Hat tip to Instapundit.
(I was, however, able to suppress my smug reaction at spelling "schadenfreude" correctly the first try...)
(And what does it say about German that they have a word for "pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others"? Is it just a function of the structure of the German language, the ease of making new words by combining two or three existing words? Or is it cultural? I dunno...
1 comment:
Having studied German and known a few, lived in Vienna and learned medieval German, and read some of the old Roman writings about the customs of Germanic tribes - and with a major in cultural anthropology, yeh it's them all right.
And IMO the convenience of making a new word by merely adding two words together is offset by the additional length of the word involved and the ass-backwards Yoda-ish location in a sentence of the verb - which, at the end is.
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