German is such a kicky little language for expressing unhappy concepts, idnnit? It has perhaps my favorite: schadenfreude. Why doesn’t American English have an equivalent word meaning “delight and exuberance in the suffering of others?” Only, y’know shorter. Easier to spell.
The best I can think of – and I trust you’ll agree with me on this – is “glee.” Glee is such a fucking hateful little four letter word. Not to mention useless. Happiness can be expressed so much better in other English words that don’t sound so dippy. He sang along gleefully to the “Barney” song. I joined my Glee Club when I was sixteen. When he knelt to propose she clapped her hands in glee. FUCK! They all sound like thoroughbred twits.
I don’t think I’ve seen its use in the modern sense where it didn’t include connotations of hurtfulness that other English words married with happiness and hatefulness simply don’t possess: Once I learned that my ex-husband’s mistress died choking on his cum on their wedding night, my despondence over their recent marriage was instantly transfigured with a sense of uninhibited glee. That’s fucking poetry. No other synonym of happy fits that sentence so well, or any other sentence expressing a similar opinion.
But can I find one. single. dictionary out there that agrees with me? NooOOoooo. Glee is always defined as “exuberant happiness,” with NO other connotations. People, this is an injustice I can no longer let stand. Hence this thread. Glee should also mean “hateful happiness.” Thus I launch a new idea to improve this bitter old world. SPREAD THE WORD. Use “glee” yourself. Use it well and use it gleefully. Know that I now stand here, a glee black man, laughing gleefully at the changes I’ve wrought here today.
What word do you propose to replace the correct and modern, non-hurtful uses of “glee” in your second paragraph?
Phouka’s sig is highly appropriate. After a couple decades of more frequent use, schadenfreude will shorten its pronuciation and spelling in English. My prediction is that it will turn into the word shit. Shit will by then have been replaced with fitzwalladernanakacree.
**This Year’s Model. ** My choice? Ecstasy and its variations. Any misunderstandings deriving from the drug of the same name would doubtless improve the dispositions of the singing kid, teen club and impending marriage in my examples.
I forgot about glee when I pitted glee. Part of me is cackling in glee at glee and gleefully awaits glee’s response. Perhaps he will adopt the name ecstasy as suggested.
I should do a serious of semi-rants that pit words with Dopers’ screen names. “I HATE ASTRO… in which I pit the deficiencies in scientfic nomenclature dealing with outer space,” for example.
There is an English word, “epicaricacy,” which means schadenfreude. But it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue like “schadenfreude.”
This, of course, brings up the irony of declaring a word as English simply because it is constructed of the same Greek and/or Latin roots as many of our other words.
Askia, do you have kids? I ask because ‘glee’ is the word I always think of for the hysterical big grinny giggles that my one-year-old gets when she’s really having fun. No other word really describes it, IMHO. (I think it stops at teenagehood if not earlier, though.) Anyway, I must disaglee…errr…disagree with your conclusion that ‘glee’ is useless.
Save the glees!
If you ever feel the urge to pit a mundane white flower, I might be able to think of one…
From Here
"*References to the word online quote Bailey’s Dictionary ca.1700, where the question is raised as to whether Bailey invented the word himself, as a direct transliteration from the Greek Epickarikaky, or not.
And that’s it. The only reference.
Other massive and conclusive, exhaustive works of English, such as OED, M-W, AHD and so on have no reference to it, not even as obsolete.*"
Seems that epicaricacy’s inclusion in the English language is pretty tenuous.