Conjubilant and Confelicitous

In lastweek’s blog I proposed that the English language needed an antonym for the word schadenfreude. The Pali language from 2,500 years ago had a word meaning to delight in the happiness of another person. That word is muditā. However, I stated, the English language did not and suggested that English needs to find one.

Since that post I have had a couple of conversations with friends about this lack in the English language. Those conversations came up with a couple of candidates to fill the gap.

The first is the word conjubilant, which was suggested by one friend. As we know, to be jubilant is to be happy, joyful, or pleased. Jubilation is often expressed openly. Adding the prefix con attaches the meaning of with to the adjective jubilant. Thus, we get a word that means to be happy with, or joyful together.

Then, we did a search and discovered that the word conjubilant already exists in the English language. It entered the English language in the 17^th century and reached its peak usage (albeit limited) in the late 19^th and early 20^th century. Today, it is considered a rare and archaic word.

Conjubilant though, does not quite encompass the meaning of delighting in the happiness of another (or others.) It means to be joyful with others, perhaps in celebration of a common success or triumph, rather than being joyful for others.

The other word came through a more intensive search. We discovered (or, more accurately, re-discovered) the word confelicity. This word more accurately describes the feeling of pleasure in someone else’s joy or happiness.

As with the previous word, confelicity is also rarely used and has faded into disuse. Confelicity was coined during the (European) Enlightenment by scholars keen to derive an antonym to the word schadenfreude. If the history and experience of living in Enlightenment times is recalled, it is understandable why scholars and others would seek such a word.

However, confelicity remained embedded within the vocabulary of high-status and academic circles. It did not enter common parlance and has rarely to this day done so.

We could help it do so.

The words we use both describe the world about us as well as shaping our understanding of the world. The best-known formulation of this idea is the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, named after two early 20^th century linguists, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf.

The hypothesis recognises that some concepts in one culture do not exist in another. One of the reasons for this may be that the concept does not have a word that names it. The hypothesis suggests that if a language does not have a word for a particular concept then the concept will, at best, be poorly defined, and, at worst, remain unrecognised. The most famous example of this is that of the Inuit language with more than 100 words for “snow” as the linguist Whorf (of Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis fame) announced.

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis has two forms, a strong form and a weak form. The strong form submits that language determines thought and therefore our perception of the world. The weak form says that language influences thought. Modern linguistic scholarship accepts the weak form, with the strong form having fallen out of favour since World War 2.

Because words influence the way in which we perceive the world and ourselves, we could use words in a more thoughtful, considered, and encouraging manner.

Let us consider the two words, schadenfreude and confelicity.

Schadenfreude has increased tenfold in usage in the last forty years. In contrast, confelicity has hardly registered in usage.

When we look around the world we can see instances of schadenfreude most everywhere we look. We see it politically, we see it economically, we see it in our education systems, we can sometimes even see it in our health and welfare systems.

Confelicity, on the other hand, is not so often witnessed.

Might that be because we do not use the word?

As the famous aphorism goes: if you don’t use it, you lose it.

If we don’t use the word, we lose not just the word, we lose the concept it describes.

Let’s start using the word confelicity.

Let’s start being confelicitous.