Posted on 06/12/2005 5:49:48 AM PDT by SlowBoat407
Schadenfreude.
There, I’ve said it. Better yet, written it. You have no idea how good this feels.
It’s been ages since I first slipped this polysyllabic German noun into a column.
“What is this ?” my editor yelped.
“Schadenfreude?” I asked innocently. “It means taking pleasure in someone else’s misery.”
“Why don’t you just say that then?” he demanded.
“ I did. In German. We have no word for it.”
“This isn’t a German newspaper. You have enough trouble with English. Stick to the language you know best.”
“Muy bien,” I muttered and replaced s chadenfreude with a long, awkward English phrase I’ve since forgotten.
A few months later, I tried again.
“No s chadenfreude!” he hollered into the phone.
“Mea culpa,” I gulped, adding stupidly, “but I see it all the time in The New Yorker.”
“That’s nice. Next time you write a piece for The New Yorker, use it. In the meantime, don’t.”
And so the s chadenfreude power struggle began.
“No one knows what it means,” he insisted every time I tried to insert the 13-letter word.
“Yes they do. Or they can figure it out,” I whined.
“It’s a terrible word,” he declared.
In short, s chadenfr eude was verboten. Verboten wasn’t verboten. Neither was “angst,” nor a bevy of words borrowed from foreign languages. Decolletage? Derriere? Carte blanche? Carpe diem? Gesundheit? All acceptable.
I made a last stab at s chadenfreude a couple of months ago. My exasperated editor agreed to conduct a survey to see how many writers were familiar with the word.
“No dice,” he announced, with a touch of – dare I say it? – s chadenfreude.
“No one knew what it meant.”
“You only asked the sports guys, didn’t you?” I wailed.
Then I devised a plan. I’d sneak the word into a quote, with questions like this:
“Would you say this whole thing reeks of s chadenfreude?”
Unfortunately, most of the people I talk to are council members, cranks and kooks.
“Huh?” they’d reply.
So I have been left to morosely underline the word I-dare-not-write whenever I stumble upon it in other publications.
And I’ve spent many melancholic hours consumed with envy for these writers and their unfettered access to big words.
I also keep a tally of how many times the word pops up in Google: 434,000 hits as of Friday.
In the process, I’ve discovered s chadenfreude Web sites. Found a comedy group by that name. A punk band, too.
Searching the Internet, I see that even Rush Limbaugh dared utter the word. He has millions of listeners. I’ll bet none objected.
Schadenfreude was even dictionary.com’s Word of the Day on May 10, 2000.
“A malicious satisfaction in the misfortune of others,” read the official definition.
A good word, no?
But not for me.
So, you wonder, why is today different from any other?
My editor is out of town. He’s taken a well-deserved long weekend off.
No sooner had he announced his plans than it hit me. This was my chance. Not only could I write the word, I could do other crazy things. Heck, I’d even be able to use parentheses. (My editor hates them, says they “junk up” newspaper copy.)
“While you’re away, I’m going to use s chadenfreu de,” I warned him earlier this week.
“Better not, ” he said, with a sly laugh. “You see it everywhere these days. In fact, it’s become a cliche .”
Reach Kerry at (757) 446-2306 or kerry.dougherty@cox.net.
They do use some foreign words with the letter 'z' in them (such as 'zoo,' which is pronounced 'so').
How do you say it in Southern dialect?
Y'all-come-back-now
Wry, Wry, chuckle, chuckle.
Ssshhh! I'm forty miles behind enemy lines.
SHAY-en-froid-ah
I'm so confused...
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