Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

18 ENVY IN LANGUAGE
Early English examples are: 'There be others that be envious to see
other in gretter degree thanne they.' 'No lawful meanes can carrie me
Out of enuies reach.' 'It is much more shame to have envy at other for
mony, clothing, or possessions. '
Definitions emphasize the feeling of hostility, spite and ill-will. According
to these, envy is present when there is 'mortification and ill-will
occasioned by the contemplation of superior advantages.' On the other
hand, envy may simply mean that one wishes one might do the same as
someone else. The first definition of envy as a verb is most specific: 'To
feel displeasure and ill-will at the superiority of (another person) in
happiness, success, reputation, or the possession of anything desirable. '
It is also called envy when a person withholds a thing from someone
else out of spite; further on we shall have to consider the phenomenon of
avarice and its relationship to envy. Thus in England at the beginning of
the seventeenth century it was said of the peacock that he so envied men
their health that he would eat his own droppings (then used for medicinal
purposes).
Incidentally, the modern English words of Latin origin for 'envy' and
'envious' have practically the same meaning as those in modern German
deriving from ancient Germanic words, which express the same states of
feeling and of mind.
'Jealous' and 'jealousy' are given detailed treatment by the Oxford
English Dictionary. Obviously 'jealous' at first denoted simply an intense
or highly excited emotional state, and then came to include a
craving for the affection of someone else. Later it came to designate the
fear of losing another person's affections, just like 'jealous' in the modern
sense. Sometimes 'jealous' has the sense of 'envious,' as in: 'It is certain
that they looked upon it with a jealous eye.' Earlier there was also an
English term 'jealous glass,' meaning the frosted glass used for groundfloor
windows, analogous to the French jalousie. But the principal
meaning of 'jealousy' remains the passionate endeavour to keep something
that is one's own by right. In complete contrast to the envious man,
therefore, one may postulate a man of jealous disposition whose mind is
at rest once he knows that he is free of rivals. In 1856 Emerson wrote:
'The jealousy of every class to guard itself, is a testimony to the reality
they have found in life. ' Where jealousy acquires undertones of mistrust
or hatred, what is meant is generally the suspicion that somebody is