Pick the odd, rare, and delightfully precise word "gluckschmerz" when you want to name the feeling of hating someone else's success. It's a mixture of envy, seething, judgment, and maybe even a little malice. "They didn't deserve it. They shouldn't have it. I want it."

You might admit to feeling gluckschmerz, or say that you feel a twinge of gluckschmerz, or, if you're honest, an avalanche of gluckschmerz. Or you might talk about fighting off a sense of gluckschmerz, or talking yourself out of your gluckschmerz.

Since the word "gluckschmerz" looks foreign, isn't immediately comprehensible, and rarely appears in everyday English texts, you may want to gloss it when you use it: that is, go ahead and define it for your reader or your listener. We'll see two examples of glossing below.

Should you capitalize it, like you do with many German nouns? Nah, it's not really German anyway, but an American invention. So I'll stick with lowercase.

Like other American coinages using German bits, such as "freudenfreude," the word "gluckschmerz" is not an authentic German word, and in fact if you used it in German to mean what it does in English—"bitter envy"—you'd be wrong. And a bad speller. (As I mentioned a moment ago, in German, Glücksschmerz means "the sharp pain that comes with profound happiness.") Still, our American "gluckschmerz," with the meaning "bitter envy," has made itself comfortable in American academia and is, therefore, fun and useful to know.

"Sometimes, bad news creates schadenfreude (pleasure at another’s misfortune; e.g., an injury of the 'cocky' star player of our rival sports team) and good news creates gluckschmerz (pain at another's good fortune; e.g., the unexpected quick recovery of this player just before an important match)."
— Richard H. Smith and Wilco W. van Dijk, Emotion Review, October 2018

"Miscarriage is a lonely business... I wanted so much to be pleased for [my family and friends] but their happy milestones – pregnancy announcements, baby showers, birth announcements, new babies, first birthday parties – became such painful triggers for me... I have spent years looking for a word that encapsulates this feeling and have finally found one whilst writing this: gluckschmerz (gluck is German for happiness, schmerz for pain), literally 'pain at others’ happiness.' It is such a lonely feeling and it feels utterly taboo to admit to it." 
— Anonymous, Miscarriage Association, undated

has this page helped you understand "gluckschmerz"?

Awesome, I'm glad it helped!

Thanks for letting me know!
If you have any questions about this word, please message me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com.

study it:

Explain the meaning of "gluckschmerz" without saying "bitterness toward someone else's success" or "hateful jealousy of someone else's happiness."

try it out:

Consider the concepts of

   1. gluckschmerz (pain in response to someone else's joy);
   2. freudenfreude (joy in response to someone else's joy);
   3. sympathy (pain in response to someone else's pain, e.g., fremdscham, secondhand shame);
   and 4. schadenfreude (joy in response to someone else's pain),

and decide how you'd organize them. Maybe you'd color-code them to flag how they feel to you, or to flag how socially appropriate they are. Maybe you'd use a two-dimensional line with "good feelings" on one end and "bad feelings" on the other. Or maybe you'd draw some overlapping circles, grouping some of the concepts together.

I'm going to go with a kind of Cartesian plane:

I've put positive, prosocial feelings in green (freudenfreude and sympathy, e.g. fremdscham) and negative, antisocial emotions in red (gluckschmerz and schadenfreude).

Do you basically agree with the way I've organized and labeled these emotions, or would you organize or label them differently, and why?

If you like, use this space to write. (To save your work, copy and paste it into an email or a document.)

before you review, play:

Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.

This month, our game is "Smorgasbord of Wordly Lore!"

Try a trivia question each day. It’ll have something to do with a food or a drink. You can play on hard mode by answering the question cold, or play on easy mode by highlighting the multiple choice options. To see the correct answer, scroll all the way down. Enjoy!

Try this one today: For reasons that aren't entirely clear, we have a fruit whose name literally means "singing wolf" and might derive from the name of a summer estate near Rome. What’s the fruit?

Highlight below to reveal the multiple choice options.…
A. pomegranate
B. watermelon
C. cantaloupe

review this word:

1. The opposite of GLUCKSCHMERZ could be

A. SYMPATHY (pain in another's pain), SCHADENFREUDE (joy in another's pain), or FREUDENFREUDE (joy in another's joy).

B. ENNUI (a feeling of sad, dull boredom) or WELTSCHMERZ (an exhausted, sad feeling about the whole world).

C. WUNDERKAMMER (a collection of strange and wonderful things) or ZUGZWANG (a situation in which you HAVE to take action, but any action you take will be bad for you).

2. Gore Vidal confessed to gluckschmerz: "_____."

A. Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little
B. The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so,
C. Fifty percent of people won't vote, and fifty percent don't read newspapers. I hope it's the same fifty percent

Answers to the review questions: 1. A 2. A Answer to the game question: cantaloupe. Again, that could just be a folk etymology, but if it's accurate, then it explains the word's resemblance to words like "recant" (meaning "to take back," literally "to sing back") and "lupine" (meaning "wolfy").

a final word:

I hope you're enjoying Make Your Point. It's made with love. I'm Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words. From my blog: On vocabulary...       36 ways to study words.       Why we forget words, & how to remember them.       How to use sophisticated words without being awkward. On writing...       How to improve any sentence.       How to motivate our kids to write.       How to stop procrastinating and start writing.       How to bulk up your writing when you have to meet a word count. From my heart: a profound thanks to the generous patrons, donors, and sponsors that make it possible for me to write these emails. If you'd like to be a patron or a donor, please click here. If you'd like to be a sponsor and include your ad in an issue, please contact me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com. A disclaimer: When I write definitions, I use plain language and stick to the words' common, useful applications. If you're interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words, I encourage you to check a dictionary. Also, because I'm American, I stick to American English when I share words' meanings, usage, and pronunciations; these elements sometimes vary across world Englishes.