You are all going to kill me, but I found an excellent article (rather long, but good) on "Schadenfreude," from The Guardian. The author has given up on "epicaricacy," though he did say that in the 1500s they did attempt to introduce "epicaricacy" into English, but it never stuck. However, the concept is seen in all these languages, which I don't think I've ever seen before:

quote:

The Japanese have a saying: “The misfortune of others tastes like honey.” The French speak of joie maligne, a diabolical delight in other people’s suffering. In Danish it is skadefryd; in Hebrew, simcha la-ed; in Mandarin, xìng-zāi-lè-huò; in Russian, zloradstvo; and for the Melanesians who live on the remote Nissan Atoll in Papua New Guinea, it is banbanam. Two millennia ago, the Romans spoke of malevolentia. Earlier still, the Greeks described epichairekakia (literally epi, over, chairo, rejoice, kakia, disgrace).

Any Hebrew speakers here? Shu lived in Israel for a year so knows it pretty well (he was in his early 20s, though), and he has never heard of the Hebrew word. But I told him I haven't heard of a lot of words either.

Danish skadefryd is cognate with Schadenfreude. Danish skade “damage” is cognate with German Schade “damage” and English scathe. Danish fryd “joy” is cognate with German Freude “joy”.

I thought ἐπιχαιρεκακία was from κακος “evil”.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: goofy,

Not sure, Goofy. I guess one could think of epicaricacy being somewhat evil in spirit. After all, you are happy that someone else is in misery.