Envy vs. Jealousy

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Lee. I’m calling from Elk Grove Village, Illinois.

But I have a question for you.

I used to think there was a distinction between the words envy and jealousy, or being envious and jealous.

And I hear a lot of people these days saying, I’m really jealous when I think they wish that they have what somebody else has.

Is that distinction still viable?

Where were you encountering this?

I’ve heard it on National Public Radio, among other places.

Well, surely they have perfect grammar and diction on NPR.

No, this is a semantic issue, not a grammatical one.

All right.

Some of the conservative authorities will say that there’s a distinction, but I think that distinction is something that they’re looking hard for and isn’t supported by the evidence at hand, if that makes sense.

Is it kind of a distinction that you’re jealous of things that you own or think you own and you’re envious of what you don’t have but would like?

It’s something like that, but the thing is jealousy is the troublemaker here.

Jealousy is the word that has the more variability to its meaning.

So see if this makes sense to you.

For example, you could be envious of someone, meaning you want what they have for yourself.

So it could be good looks or money or a sexy bod, whatever it is, but you have no claim on it, right?

That’s envy.

It’s also kind of a form of rivalry.

You not only want what they have, but you want to take it away from them, and you want to be better than them because of it.

So that’s envy.

That’s kind of all wrapped up in a package there.

It’s about possession of a quality or possession of a thing.

So it’s sort of I’ll have what she’s having.

Yeah, I like that.

And I don’t want her to have it.

I want to be better than her.

I want to have the good things and deprive her of those.

Do you think it has to do with the deprivation, though?

I mean, I can see being jealous enough to drive across the country in diapers, but being envious that the other astronaut got selected to go up on the space shuttle.

But not necessarily wanting to take that away from the person, just wanting to go up in the space shuttle myself.

Well, if you look, I can say, again, it’s one of those things that you can talk about what you believe envy and jealousy mean.

But when you look at actually how people use them when they’re not thinking about the meanings, the patterns fall pretty clearly.

I mean, by far and away.

So let’s talk about jealous for a second.

If you’re jealous, you can also have envy.

Envy can be kind of part of jealousy.

So that’s kind of where we’re getting confusion here.

And also, when you have jealousy, you tend to have anger and suspicion and wariness.

And you’re possessive of what you already have, and you don’t want someone else to take it.

When you talk about the astronaut who drove across country because she was a jealous lover, that’s what you’re talking about.

She did not want somebody to take her man from her, right?

Yeah.

So you can be jealous of someone’s good fortune or their belongings or their smoking hot spouse.

That’s also jealousy.

And you can see where envy and jealousy kind of overlap there.

You know, English is well known for being a language filled with synonyms and near synonyms.

And I think that’s what’s happening here.

There’s an overlap.

And it’s definitely a case where the context of what you say or what you write is going to explain to the people you’re communicating with what you mean.

So these words don’t stand alone.

They’re heavily dependent upon the company they keep in our language, and that’s where the meaning is going to come through.

Envy made the list of seven deadly sins, didn’t it?

I think it did. Did jealousy not?

I don’t think so.

Envy is enough of a troublemaker.

We don’t need jealousy on top of it, right?

Have we provided you with some clarity here?

Yes, it’s a big help. I appreciate it.

All right. Thank you, Lee.

Thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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