Epicaricacy

Wednesday’s word is Epicaricacy, meaning to take joy in the misfortune of others. Yes, this is the (admittedly rare) English word that doesn’t exist, causing an outbreak of German in otherwise sane sentence.

It’s interesting that taking pleasure from others misfortune as a single ‘concept’; Schadenfreude, skadeglädje, leedvermaak, skadefryd, skadeglädje and vahingonilo, are all Northern European words (being German, Swedish, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian and Finnish respectively). Us North Europeans seem to like little more that a good laugh at someone in pain.

Perhaps we should all be a little more Buddhist, and enjoy Muditā, the joy at another persons well being, unadulterated by self interest.

More on Epicaricacy in another post later this week, about JOINs. 🙂