• This is a “Word of the Day" thread, to reply to this thread please come up with a sentence with the given word. More details.

Word of the day .. schadenfreude

It comes from a combination of the German words for harm/damage (Schaden) and joy (Freude), and is often used as a loanword in English. Technically, schadenfreude should be capitalised like all German nouns, but when used in English it’s usually written in the lower case. As is the rule with most (but not all) loanwords in English,
 

She was a strange woman who took joy in the suffering of others and always experienced schadenfreude when her friends were miserable.
 
My husband was walking home from work one day, and a smarty-pants kid on a bike rode past him and said something derogatory to hubby. Unphased, hubby carried on and a block later hubby happened upon the same smarty-pants kid sprawled out on the roadway.

Said kid had taken a good spill on his bike and hubby enjoyed a little schadenfreude.

True story.
 


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