He is well known for his vast vocabulary among other things. Shashi Tharoor is the one who taught India many difficult words such as farrago, rodomontade, floccinaucinihilipilification and so on. He tweeted in support of a colleague yesterday with the word Schadenfreude – but what does it mean and how can we all use it to sound smarter?
According to Tharoor, his fellow congressman was being subjected to ‘persecution and character assassination’ by ‘malicious minds’ indulging in schadenfreude.
Some of the tweeple supplied the meaning for those who were unfamiliar with the word. To be clear, a 'business that thrives on schadenfreude' is, say, a funeral service - the more bereaved, unhappy people there are, the better business is.
This wasn’t a word most of India had heard before, but it’s safe to say that a significantly larger number is now familiar with the word as well as its meaning.
There is a nasty little part of us human beings that rejoices at the misfortune of others – or maybe we’re just thankful that it’s not us in their place.
Sometimes it can be funny: people falling down, terrified by someone playing a prank… there is a good reason the slipping-on-a-banana-peel genre of comedy not only exists but thrives.
When bad things happen to people who have done you wrong – that schadenfreude seems kind of justified.
For a long time now, the world has had to suffer the neo-imperialist, big brother attitude of the USA. So when the country elected a rank idiot to its highest office, the rest of the world was sort of justified in feeling a smidgen of Schadenfreude.
When that badly behaved kid in the plane/store/restaurant falls down, that is just justice – not for the kid but for the parents who cannot be bothered to control their kid. And who can blame the onlooker for feeling some amount of schadenfreude at such a time?
One can feel satisfaction that an ex is missing them and that the ex is now trying to fill that void with something else. One can feel schadenfreude as the ‘dumpee’ in a relationship; if the dumper appears to be unhappy.
When you find out that the police are not after you, what you feel is relief. When you find out that they are after someone you dislike and its making you happy; that is schadenfreude. Yes, the misfortune of others can make us feel nice – but that isn’t very nice of us.
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