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Make Your Point > Archived Issues > FREUDENFREUDE

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pronounce FREUDENFREUDE:

FROY dun froy duh

Hear it.

connect this word to others:

Oooh, it's a cool little word. Can you tell how happy I am to share it with you? Is the happiness contagious? If so, we've both just tasted a little freudenfreude: secondhand joy. Joy-joy.

Yes, this word was made up by English-speaking folks; it's not a legitimate German term. As best I can tell, it was coined by Catherine Chambliss and colleagues in this 2012 academic paper as a playful twist on Sch____freude, or "harm joy." This Sch____freude is a legitimate German term that means "the happiness you feel because of someone else's pain." Can you recall it?

(To reveal any word with blanks, give it a click.) 

definition:

"Freudenfreude" originated in the US around the year 2012. It's made of German bits that literally mean "joy joy."

Freudenfreude is secondhand joy. In other words, when you experience freudenfreude, you experience the joy of seeing someone else be lucky, happy, or successful.

grammatical bits:

Part of speech:

Noun, the uncountable kind: "Let's cultivate freudenfreude;" "She felt a warm thrill of freudenfreude."

Other forms: 

None yet. In fact, "freudenfreude" hasn't even made it into dictionaries yet. But feel free to coin your own forms, like "freudenfreudish" or "freudenfreudize." 

how to use it:

If you use this new, rare, cute, fancy, ersatz-German word, I imagine that somewhere, someone is going to be upset with you. ("It's not even real German!" "It's ugly!" "It's therapy-babble!") However, "freudenfreude" is fun. Let's enjoy it.

You might write about experiencing, cultivating, or seeking out freudenfreude. 

And when you do, you might want to gloss it for your readers: go ahead and define it as you use it. We'll see an example of glossing below, in the citation from Reddit.

I recommend writing "freudenfreude" with a lowercase letter, like any other English common noun, rather than treating it like a legitimate German noun that we borrowed (like Sprachgefühl, Torschlusspanik, Weltschmerz, Zugzwang, and of course Schadenfreude). But we'll see some writers capitalizing it. Do that if you want it to look more legitimately German, I suppose!

examples:

"Envy by itself isn't bad... It's when envy gets mixed with vindictiveness that it gets ugly. 'I want that and I don't want them to have it. I want to destroy it, ruin it, etc.' We can also mix envy with... freudenfreude (joy for another's joy). 'I want that and I'm happy they have it.'"
   — Acfox13, Reddit, June 2023

"Sharing in someone else's joy can foster resilience, improve life satisfaction and help people cooperate during a conflict. While the benefits of freudenfreude are plentiful, it doesn't always come easily."
   — Juli Fraga, New York Times, 25 November 2022

has this page helped you understand "freudenfreude"?

   

Awesome, I'm glad it helped!

Thanks for letting me know!
If you have any questions about this word, please message me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com.


study it:

Explain the meaning of "freudenfreude" without saying "positive empathy" or "vicarious joy."

try it out:

In this paper, Catherine Chambliss, the scholar who probably coined the word "freudenfreude," argued that freudenfreude is essential in relationships:

"Others' success or good fortune can pit caring and competing against one another. Joy at their good fortune often mingles with envy. Therefore, managing the balance between these contradictory aspects of our nature is an important element of social intelligence... When others report success to us, they generally hope for an empathic response of shared joy (Freudenfreude). If instead they get a negative, competitive reaction, they may respond with confusion, disappointment, irritation, or all three. Ongoing lack of Freudenfreude eventually can pose a fatal challenge to a relationship."

Do you agree with her point that relationships will die without freudenfreude? Why or why not? 




before you review, play:

Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.

Our game for this month is Make Your Point Before & After!

I’ll give you a clue, and you give me a verbal mashup including at least one word or phrase we've studied before.

For example, if I give you "It's someone who meets you at the library to join you in a state of deep, serious, often gloomy thoughtfulness," then you give me "brown study buddy." It's a mashup of "brown study" and "study buddy."

Try this one today: Whether or not you do it in glass houses, it's the hypocritical act of criticizing someone for over-relying on Google Translate to demystify foreign texts when, in secret, you have to do the same thing yourself.

To reveal the first two hints, highlight the hidden white text.

Hint 1: The number of words in this Before & After is... three, with one hyphen.

Hint 2: The first word in this Before & After is... "Rosetta."

Hint 3: Use this term.

To see the answer, scroll all the way down.

review this word:

1. As we've seen, the precise opposite of FREUDENFREUDE is SCHADENFREUDE. But a pretty close opposite of FREUDENFREUDE is

A. ADMIRATION.
B. RESENTMENT.
C. DISRESPECT.

2. Unsurprisingly, Chambliss and colleagues found in 2012 that college students with _____ were LESS likely to report feelings of freudenfreude.

A. pets
B. mild depression
C. financial security




Answers to the review questions:
1. B
2. B

Answer to the game question: Rosetta stone-throwing.


a final word:

I hope you're enjoying Make Your Point. It's made with love. I'm Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words.

From my blog:
On vocabulary...
      36 ways to study words.
      Why we forget words, & how to remember them.
      How to use sophisticated words without being awkward.
On writing...
      How to improve any sentence.
      How to motivate our kids to write.
      How to stop procrastinating and start writing.
      How to bulk up your writing when you have to meet a word count.

From my heart: a profound thanks to the generous patrons, donors, and sponsors that make it possible for me to write these emails. If you'd like to be a patron or a donor, please click here. If you'd like to be a sponsor and include your ad in an issue, please contact me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com.

A disclaimer: When I write definitions, I use plain language and stick to the words' common, useful applications. If you're interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words, I encourage you to check a dictionary. Also, because I'm American, I stick to American English when I share words' meanings, usage, and pronunciations; these elements sometimes vary across world Englishes.

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