English Needs An Antonym For Schadenfreude

In the mid-1800s the English language adopted the German word schadenfreude. In German schadenfreude means damage-joy. Dictionaries define it as malicious joy in witnessing the misfortune of others.

During the first century after adoption the word hardly entered common parlance. It began to be used more often from the mid-20^th century onward and by the mid-1980s was being used once in every 100 million words used.

However, since then its use has skyrocketed to being used once in every ten million words by 2020. A massive tenfold upsurge in less than forty years!

Prior to schadenfreude English had the word gloat from the 16^th century. Originally it meant to look at furtively and has a common root with the familiar glower. Parallel with the use of schadenfreude, gloat has also become more frequently used since the 1980s, having quadrupled in use in the same forty years.

What does this say about our culture? Are we becoming further and further disconnected from one another to the extent that we talk more often about finding joy in someone else’s lack of joy?

The words we use have an influence upon our worldview and our cultural psyche, and vice versa. Hence, a word such as schadenfreude both describes our worldview and shapes it at the same time.

Certainly, when we look around, and listen to some of the conversations around us, we hear examples of this often. The game of “us” versus “them” is frequently played out. Racism, sexism, and other forms of prejudice play this game. One of the prizes in this game is when the “us” team defeats the “them” team and “we” are able to gloat over the misfortune of “them.” That is schadenfreude.

An Antonym

Does English have an antonym to schadenfreude?

It appears not. English has words that come close to the meaning of being unhappy at someone else’s misfortune: e.g. sympathy, pity, compassion. But English does not have a specific word meaning to be happy at someone else’s happiness, joy, or good fortune.

Other languages do. The Pali language, for example, has the word muditā, meaning the joyfulness that comes from delighting in the joy of others. The word is used in Hindu texts that are at least two thousand years old, and was used by the Buddha even earlier.

Muditā has been in use in the Pali language, and others in India and surrounding areas, for well over two millennia. It has made a significant contribution to the worldview of cultures in that part of the world.

English, and German, it would seem have not been influenced by any similar words.

It’s time we found one.

An attempt was made by a commune in the Haight-Ashbury neighbourhood of San Francisco in the early 1980s. The Kerista Commune was an intentional grouping of people who believed in and practiced polyamory. In an effort to reject sentiments such as jealousy and envy the commune members fashioned the word compersion, from the French word compère (partner) and the English suffix sion. The meaning attributed to the word however was limited. It signified the happiness one felt for the happiness of a partner. Compersion was not extended to others outside the polyamorous community.

So, the English language is still looking for a word that means to take delight in the joy, happiness, or good fortune of others, whether of one’s immediate grouping or outside that grouping.

At a time when we English speakers are using words associated with finding joy in others discomfort more frequently, the search for an antonym for schadenfreude and gloat is vital.

The other approach we could use is to regularly appreciate, applaud, and find joy in the happiness of others. Out of such a milieu an antonym for schadenfreude might emerge.