23 August 2010

This video defines "schadenfreude"


I feel guilty about posting this, and will probably take some flak from readers - but it does exemplify the term quite well:

Schadenfreude = pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.

and for completeness, these complementary terms:

Empathy = unhappiness at another's misfortune
Envy = unhappiness at another's good fortune
Mudita = Buddhist concept of happiness at another's good fortune

I found myself frankly uncomfortable watching the video, because the participants appeared to be at risk for significant injury.  The video is apparently compiled from segments of a television program called "Wipeout," which may or may not air in this country.   If nothing else, this reminded me of why I stopped watching TV.

Addendum:  This from a comment by Conor:
After all these years being told there's no English for for schadenfreude (and even explaining to some surprised German that we had to translation for schadenfreude nor doppelganger), I found that there sort of is: epicaricacy. Found in archaic dictionaries, and modern collections of rare words, and not much in between. Of course, now that it's on TYWKIWDBI, it will surely flourish.
It's not in my Random House, or my OED, but it is in Wiktionary, as he notes, with this etymology:
From Ancient Greek ἐπί (epi, upon) + χάρις (kharis, joy) +κακός (kakos, evil).
The next time I hear this word, I'm going to ask the speaker if they read this blog...

6 comments:

  1. I dunno. I've seen a number of episodes of that show, and most of it isn't as bad as that video. (Though a few of those looked pretty nasty. How about not setting up a situation that looks like it's got the force a 25mph car crash?) I've seen worse on failblog. But then, I don't usually watch the failblog videos, either.

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  2. It's always very fascinating for me, to realize, which German words are used as a loan word in the English language.

    It also makes me a bit proud. ;)

    Overmore, it's nice, that you use words, that actually exist in that specific meaning. Not like "Beamer" or "Handy" in German.

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  3. I don't think you'll catch much flak. It was easy for me to check my political correctness at the door and just have a laugh at the slapstick goofiness of it all. Schadenvielfreude (not a word, I just made it up)(3:58 did make me cringe)

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  4. me and the kids watch it and laugh. we are mean, I suppose. I always thought it looked like fun. That #2 wipeout here looked pretty nasty due to the neck angle, mostly it's just falling into mud and bouncing off of objects. Much less demeaning than the majority of tv.

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  5. After all these years being told there's no English for for schadenfreude (and even explaining to some surprised German that we had to translation for schadenfreude nor doppelganger), I found that there sort of is: epicaricacy. Found in archaic dictionaries, and modern collections of rare words, and not much in between. Of course, now that it's on TYWKIWDBI, it will surely flourish.

    http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/epicaricacy

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  6. Thanks, Conor. Addendum added to post.

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