Is there an antonym for Schadenfreude?

Question

Question

If Schadenfreude means joy at someone else's failure or ill-fortune, is there an antonym that means resentment at someone else's success or good fortune?

Note

This is a different kind of opposite to the one mentioned in this previous question Looking for the opposite of Schadenfreude

"resentment at someone else's success or good fortune?" We call that envy, "Neid" in German. — , Oct 26 '20 at 11:40
@Polygnome if it's an antonym in regard to the "joy"/"Freude" part of Schadenfreude, then yes. Or maybe even better: compassion/ Mitleid. — henning, Oct 27 '20 at 11:23
According to The Simpsons, the answer is "sour grapes" ;-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B01e7n4RzZc — LeopardSkinPillBoxHat, Oct 27 '20 at 21:16
Purely via googletranslate: replaced "malicious joy" with "benificant sadness" to get "wohltätige Traurigkeit". As they say, Don't Try This At Home. — Carl Witthoft, Oct 28 '20 at 14:54

score 59 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 27 '20 at 23:58

Not really an answer to this particular question, but for completeness here's the four possible logical variations of this:

                  ┃ You're happy about it   │  You're unhappy about it
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╋━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┿━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Someone's lucky   ┃  Gunst,                 │  Neid / Missgunst
                  ┃“Ich freue mich für dich”│
──────────────────╂─────────────────────────┼───────────────────────
Someone's unlucky ┃  Schadenfreude          │  Mitleid

@gented it certainly is unexpectedly popular! Hoffentlich wird keiner neidisch, sondern gönnt mir die Upvotes. Ich habe Mitleid mit den anderen Antworten, keineswegs Schadenfreude dass sie weniger beliebt sind... — leftaroundabout, Oct 29 '20 at 20:43

tofro · Answer 2 · 2020-10-27T14:57:34.990

26

Missgunst (translates somewhat literally into "failing to grant/allow something to someone") is probably what your looking for.

edited Oct 27 '20 at 14:57

answered Oct 26 '20 at 12:26

tofro

64,637
2
85
197

1

To me the concepts seem quite close to each other, both negative. – Frankstr Mar 11 '21 at 20:55

guidot · Answer 3 · 2020-10-27T23:02:17.097

23

The antonym searched (so instead of joy over ones sorrow becomes sorrow over ones joy) seems the quite simple word (present in many languages):

Neid (envy, jealousy).

edited Oct 27 '20 at 23:02

answered Oct 26 '20 at 12:32

guidot

28,192
2
35
84

Couldn't "Eifersucht" also be used for jealousy, or does that have a different connotation? – MattDMo Oct 27 '20 at 22:43
4

Eifersucht is mostly used for relationships, where one person receives or is assumed to receive affection by an outsider, so its not a simple synonym. – guidot Oct 27 '20 at 22:59
OK, that makes sense. Thanks – MattDMo Oct 27 '20 at 23:11

score 8 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 26 '20 at 12:40

8

From yesterday, hardly used today:

Scheelsucht

answered Oct 26 '20 at 12:40

Pollitzer

16,015
2
23
47

1

Do you know as a "native speaker knows", that the term "from yesterday" refers to something oldfashioned in language? I found as first glance this: https://dict.leo.org/forum/viewUnsolvedquery.php?idThread=650668&idForum=1&lang=de&lp=ende – Shegit Brahm Oct 28 '20 at 15:27
2

@ShegitBrahm: Since I'm one of the natives, yes, I do. – Pollitzer Oct 28 '20 at 16:11
thanks, again what learned. My knowledge is small and I did not know that. – Shegit Brahm Oct 28 '20 at 16:26
good one! not often used today and also regional from my area, the rhineland - https://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/scheel#:~:text=%5B1%5D%20schief%2C%20schiefblickend,sch%C4%93l%20%E2%80%9Eschief(%C3%A4ugig)%E2%80%9C – Frankstr Apr 01 '21 at 20:58

score 3 · Answer 5 · answered Oct 27 '20 at 13:41

I think the first question is, what's the real antonym. As a german speaker, I would see the antonym for Schadenfreude to be a word, that conveys "being happy that you're happy" (as antonym to "being happy that you're unhappy").

There is probably a word for this, maybe someone can comment or edit the answer.

As a phrase one would say "Ich freue mich für dich" / "Ich freue mich mit dir".

Another way to look at it (which does not feel like being the antonym to Schadenfreude in german) would be "I am unhappy that you're unhappy" and this would be "Mitleid".

score 2 · Answer 6 · answered Oct 27 '20 at 14:15

2

"Es sei dir gegönnt" bzw. jemanden etwas gönnen

answered Oct 27 '20 at 14:15

Sayyed Ahmad Fani Yazdi

29
1

5

Welcome to German.SE. It is common sense to answer an english written question in english. Additionally it is a bit short - which can happen - and so maybe: is there an (online) resource that can be used to understand the term you write. – Shegit Brahm Oct 27 '20 at 15:02
1

@ShegitBrahm: Gefragt ist ein deutscher Ausdruck - Du mokierst Dich ernsthaft über das "bzw." zwischen den beiden? – user unknown Oct 30 '20 at 22:53

Is there an antonym for Schadenfreude?

6 Answers6