Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Schadenfreude isn't understood?
Rick Morrissey writes on the Sports pages of the Tribune and today wrote about 2 football players who were traded to other teams and now are doing well. He said, "Going into the season, the situation was ripe for schadenfreude - the enjoyment of other people's misfortune - but Orton and Favre have gone and spoiled it by succeeding." First of all, you have to explain its definition??? I can see it for epicaricacy, but not for Schadenfreude. Secondly, is there a word for when you expect to enjoy others' misfortune, but it's foiled? There should be! We've all felt it (or most of us). Some arrogant jerk is about to lose at something...and you're ready to be so happy...then BAM! He wins! Ugh! [I've also been using "ugh" a lot lately!]
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2 comments:
What's the etiquette on using a "fancy" word and then immediately having to define it? What's the point of it? I'm smarter than you, I have a bigger vocabulary, so I'm going to flaunt it? I learned at a young age to tailor my vocabulary for the appropriate setting. If I think a word is something no one will recognize, I won't use it unless absolutely necessary.
And heaven forbid our newspaper writers use big words that we might have to look up in a dictionary. In a web article, you could just look the word up directly, but print media lacks this feature. I guess we are approaching the time when newspapers are dumbed down and all the intelligent writing is on the internet.
Yes, I agree, Sean. And I hardly think "Schadenfreude" is that fancy, but then I like words.
I also agree about intelligent writing being on the Internet. What a change in the last 10 years.
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