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Make Your Point > Archived Issues > GLUCKSCHMERZ

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pronounce GLUCKSCHMERZ:

GLOOK shmairtz

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connect this word to others:

When a close friend of yours graduates college, or becomes a parent, or otherwise seems to be winning at life, you're probably happy for them. You're probably feeling freudenfreude, or secondhand joy.

But not always. Sometimes a friend's success makes you feel terrible: jealous, envious, sad, bitter, and secretly hateful. In that case, you're feeling gluckschmerz: the pain triggered by someone else's happiness or good fortune.

Believe it or not, gluckschmerz isn't the first schmerz we've met here in Make Your Point! We've also had a look at Weltschmerz, meaning "an exhausted, sad feeling about absolutely everything." Could you give the literal meaning of Weltschmerz? (If you guessed "everything pain," you've almost got it!)

definition:

First, a warm thanks to Jörg and Elke, German speakers, for cluing me in about this term!

You won't find "gluckschmerz" in English dictionaries. At least, not as of 2024. But since you will find it in some English publications, the dictionaries will probably catch on soon. It may have been invented for laughs around 1985 by a letter-writer known as Wanda Tinasky; her identity has been hotly debated.

Before we dive too deep here, it's important to know that "gluckschmerz" is an American invention made of German bits, and it only makes sense in English contexts. In fact, in real German, the word "Glücksschmerz"—note the umlaut over the "U," and the double S in the middle—means something quite different. It still literally means "happiness pain," but in context it means "the exquisite pain that accompanies deep happiness; e.g., while falling in love."

"Hey!" you might say. "Pain while profoundly happy? That's cool! We need a word like that in English!" I agree. For that, we've got a few pretty good terms, like "limerence," "infatuation," and "new relationship energy." And for the pain of knowing things will eventually disappear even as you savor them, we've got "mono no aware."

So! In English texts, "gluckschmerz" is German for "happiness pain" or "luck pain." It's the pain or hateful envy that you feel when someone else is happy or lucky.

In general, society frowns upon gluckschmerz. It's a very ugly attitude. How ugly? You can almost see it on the villain's face below.

(Source)

grammatical bits:

Part of speech:

Noun, the uncountable kind: "I felt a twinge of gluckschmerz;" "None of us is immune to gluckschmerz."

Other forms: 

None that I've seen.

how to use it:

Pick the odd, rare, and delightfully precise word "gluckschmerz" when you want to name the feeling of hating someone else's success. It's a mixture of envy, seething, judgment, and maybe even a little malice. "They didn't deserve it. They shouldn't have it. I want it."

You might admit to feeling gluckschmerz, or say that you feel a twinge of gluckschmerz, or, if you're honest, an avalanche of gluckschmerz. Or you might talk about fighting off a sense of gluckschmerz, or talking yourself out of your gluckschmerz.

Since the word "gluckschmerz" looks foreign, isn't immediately comprehensible, and rarely appears in everyday English texts, you may want to gloss it when you use it: that is, go ahead and define it for your reader or your listener. We'll see two examples of glossing below.

Should you capitalize it, like you do with many German nouns? Nah, it's not really German anyway, but an American invention. So I'll stick with lowercase.

Like other American coinages using German bits, such as "freudenfreude," the word "gluckschmerz" is not an authentic German word, and in fact if you used it in German to mean what it does in English—"bitter envy"—you'd be wrong. And a bad speller. (As I mentioned a moment ago, in German, Glücksschmerz means "the sharp pain that comes with profound happiness.") Still, our American "gluckschmerz," with the meaning "bitter envy," has made itself comfortable in American academia and is, therefore, fun and useful to know.

examples:

"Sometimes, bad news creates schadenfreude (pleasure at another’s misfortune; e.g., an injury of the 'cocky' star player of our rival sports team) and good news creates gluckschmerz (pain at another's good fortune; e.g., the unexpected quick recovery of this player just before an important match)."
— Richard H. Smith and Wilco W. van Dijk, Emotion Review, October 2018

"Miscarriage is a lonely business... I wanted so much to be pleased for [my family and friends] but their happy milestones – pregnancy announcements, baby showers, birth announcements, new babies, first birthday parties – became such painful triggers for me... I have spent years looking for a word that encapsulates this feeling and have finally found one whilst writing this: gluckschmerz (gluck is German for happiness, schmerz for pain), literally 'pain at others’ happiness.' It is such a lonely feeling and it feels utterly taboo to admit to it." 
— Anonymous, Miscarriage Association, undated

has this page helped you understand "gluckschmerz"?

   

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 "gluckschmerz" without saying "bitterness toward someone else's success" or "hateful jealousy of someone else's happiness."

try it out:

Consider the concepts of

   1. gluckschmerz (pain in response to someone else's joy);
   2. freudenfreude (joy in response to someone else's joy);
   3. sympathy (pain in response to someone else's pain, e.g., fremdscham, secondhand shame);
   and 4. schadenfreude (joy in response to someone else's pain),

and decide how you'd organize them. Maybe you'd color-code them to flag how they feel to you, or to flag how socially appropriate they are. Maybe you'd use a two-dimensional line with "good feelings" on one end and "bad feelings" on the other. Or maybe you'd draw some overlapping circles, grouping some of the concepts together.

I'm going to go with a kind of Cartesian plane:


I've put positive, prosocial feelings in green (freudenfreude and sympathy, e.g. fremdscham) and negative, antisocial emotions in red (gluckschmerz and schadenfreude).

Do you basically agree with the way I've organized and labeled these emotions, or would you organize or label them differently, and why?




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.

This month, our game is "Smorgasbord of Wordly Lore!"

Try a trivia question each day. It’ll have something to do with a food or a drink. You can play on hard mode by answering the question cold, or play on easy mode by highlighting the multiple choice options. To see the correct answer, scroll all the way down. Enjoy!

Try this one today: For reasons that aren't entirely clear, we have a fruit whose name literally means "singing wolf" and might derive from the name of a summer estate near Rome. What’s the fruit?

Highlight below to reveal the multiple choice options.…
A. pomegranate
B. watermelon
C. cantaloupe

review this word:

1. The opposite of GLUCKSCHMERZ could be

A. SYMPATHY (pain in another's pain), SCHADENFREUDE (joy in another's pain), or FREUDENFREUDE (joy in another's joy).

B. ENNUI (a feeling of sad, dull boredom) or WELTSCHMERZ (an exhausted, sad feeling about the whole world).

C. WUNDERKAMMER (a collection of strange and wonderful things) or ZUGZWANG (a situation in which you HAVE to take action, but any action you take will be bad for you).

2. Gore Vidal confessed to gluckschmerz: "_____."

A. Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little
B. The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so,
C. Fifty percent of people won't vote, and fifty percent don't read newspapers. I hope it's the same fifty percent




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

Answer to the game question: cantaloupe. Again, that could just be a folk etymology, but if it's accurate, then it explains the word's resemblance to words like "recant" (meaning "to take back," literally "to sing back") and "lupine" (meaning "wolfy").


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.


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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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