Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Vocabulary Word: Schadenfreude

Those wacky Germans!

Schadenfreude is pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others. The word referring to this emotion has been borrowed from German by the English language and is sometimes also used as a loanword by other languages.

Philosopher and sociologist Theodor Adorno defined schadenfreude as “largely unanticipated delight in the suffering of another which is cognized as trivial and/or appropriate.”

From Wikipedia