"phthonic," "phthonos"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Not in OED.

  _Phthonic_  (Of humor, laughter, etc.) founded on or characterized by cruelty or malice.
  _Phthonos_ Cruelty or malice in or as the basis of a kind of humor.

  1987 Ronald de Sousa _The Rationality of Emotion_ (MIT Press) 275 : A certain kind of mirth, which I call _phthonic_ from a Greek word meaning "malicious envy," allows scope for wrongness in at least two different ways. Phthonic mirth need have no component of wit.

  _Ibid._ 289: Phthonic laughter...is particularly susceptible to moral condemnation....I borrow from Plato the word _phthonos_, which means something like "malicious envy" (_Philebus_, 47e).

  Ibid. 290: But how is the distinction between phthonos and wit to be drawn?...A rape joke will do: M. visits the hockey team. When she emerges she complainsd that she has been gang-raped. Wishful thinking....The phthonic element in a joke requires endorsement....The phthonic makes us laugh only insofar as the assumptions on which it is based are attitudes actually shared.

  _Ibid. 294: I speculate that each is an essential element, linked with the evocation of some frightening evil, of true phthonic laughter.

  JL


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