I know. I revisit my favorite word, "epicaricacy," way too often, though I haven't done it in awhile. As I was playing around on Google, I happened to look it up and found it on Google Scholar in this paper, entitled, "The Mirror-Neuron Paradox: How Far is Sympathy from Compassion, Indulgence, and Adulation?."

quote:

Spite or malevolence is probably a more complex form of “schadenfreude” (from German) or “epicaricacy” (from Greek). Richard Smith et al. [1996; see also Leach et al., 2002] found that there is a strong link between envy and schadenfreude or, what is known in Australasia, the “tall poppy syndrome” [Feather & Nairn, 2005].10 Evil is probably the most extreme form of schadenfreude [Khalil, 2007d]. An evil act is defined as the “joy” experienced by the principal at the sight of the misery of others, when the principal need not have benefited from the act.

I do think that when we start seeing it in scholarly papers, that don't address the word, per se, we should begin to see it in accepted dictionaries. On the other hand, I suppose one could call me biased about the word.

In the hopes that everyone won't beat me senseless for asking, but, as the newbie here, what, pray tell is epicaricacy?

Expound to your heart's content, dear Kalleh!

-Lala

Hello, Dalai!

You're giving me a grin. epicaricacy is, in the view of some, an obscure word with the same meaning as schadenfreude. It's included in editions of Bailey's Dictionary from the 1700s (roughly 1721 to 1770), but not in Johnson's Dictionary (1759?) or OED.

A few years ago we had a spiried debate over whether it could properly be considered a "word" in English, and we made some serious attempts to find it in older writings. The debate periodically resurfaces here, as a substantitve matter or as a reference to this board's "cultural history".

By the way, schadenfreude itself was an obscure word until recently. It appears as early as 1848 (as I recall), but didn't become reasonably well-known until the 1990s.

(All this is by recall. Please forgive any inaccuracies!)

Apparently from Greek ἐπιχαιρεκακία, from ἐπι "upon" + χαιρω "to rejoice" + κακος "evil". It's synonymous with "Schadenfreude".

I am sorry, Dalai. I should have explained for the sake of the newbies here. "Epicaricacy" is a very rare word that, at the moment, only appears in specialty dictionaries (online and hard copies). As you can see from Shu's post, there is controversy as to whether "epicaricacy" is an accepted word. During one of our Wordcraft Gatherings where we met John Simpson, the editor of the OED, we asked him about the word, and he merely smiled. From that response, I surmised that it won't be in the OED anytime soon. Oh, and, by the way, "epicaricacy" happens to be my favorite word. When you search for it here, you will find that we've used the word 270 times! That must be a record since it is only cited 4,610 times in Google.

Here are a couple of Wordcraft discussions about the word. As Shu said, some of them have been rather spirited!

Hello, dalai lala.
Epicaricacy is a word that appears frequently on this site, almost exclusively promoted by dear Kalleh. As she says it is rare, and since it's synonymous with schadenfreude, you could argue that the inaction of the merely smiling John Simpson of OED is reasonable.
Not that one would regard epicaricacy as a fetish…

The difficulty I have with "epicaricacy" is that it takes six short, and not naturally comfortable syllables, to say what "schadenfreude" says in four.

Although I have no prejudice against multi-syllabic words, I believe that the more the syllables the less simple the word - and I am a great believer in verbal simplicity where possible.

quote:

since it's synonymous with schadenfreude, you could argue that the inaction of the merely smiling John Simpson of OED is reasonable.

Well, I promised myself I wouldn't argue about this word anymore, but I have to reply to this. There are lots of synonyms around, aren't there? If "epicaricacy" were legitimate (and I know some think it isn't), the problem just couldn't be that another word has the same definition.

Indeed, lexicographers don't ignore a word just because a it's a synonym of another word.

There must be some other reason

quote:

Originally posted by goofy:
Indeed, lexicographers don't ignore a word just because a it's a synonym of another word.

There must be some other reason

I agree, we all need synonyms sometimes. But as a coward I try to avoid long words, polysyllabic words (as Richard says), and perhaps more simply words that are a mouthful to enunciate. Ooh, I have fallen into my own trap, better: words that are a mouthful to say.

Thank you all for the elucidation! Good word/good almost-word, depending on your point of view. I think I'm a fan of schadenfreude because it's fun to say.

Lala

I have been thinking about this ongoing discussion we've had with epicaricacy. Its use surely has created an emotional response with most logophiles...one way or the other. It's quite similar to a response, in my profession, to a nursing program that has no clinical experiences; this program assesses the competencies (for a day and a half) of their nursing students who have had other experiences in health care. Some nursing experts think this is brilliant! Others think it is the worst situation we've ever experienced! It reminds me of our reaction to the word epicaricacy. I realize that minds will never be changed on this word, just as they never will be changed about this nursing program.