A handy guide to jealousy and envy

Sunday 4/21/24

Have gotten into this before, but let us be very succinct.

People use the terms "jealousy" and "envy" interchangeably, but they are different things.

Jealousy pertains to something that is already in a person's life. One is jealous of the attention one's spouse gives another person, for example.

Envy pertains to what a person does not possess or cannot do that another does or can. One is envious of someone else's ability, for example.

Othello, then, is jealous, not envious.

Not surprisingly, I never encounter a writer of the publishing system who has a clue that there's a difference between the two words. You have to be precise. Being precise isn't a case of "Ah, I'll take a swing here" or "That's good enough." When you use a word, you're using it from the top down through the bottom of it. You have to know its meaning fully and also the shadings its picked up along the way. There's both the actual definition and these implied aspects, too, which are like the anthropological components of a word.