WOTY candidate: schadenfreude

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 6:12 PM, JAMES A. LANDAU wrote:
>
>
> WOTY candidate: "schadenfreude".  It's been around for a while (MWCD10 says 1895) but in the
> last month it has emerged from obscurity into numerous news stories. (about 1,250,000 hits on
> Google) In fact I even found a pun on the word:
>
> http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10961825
>
> "It is hardly surprising, then, that the country is enjoying a fit of Spitzenfreude—and that
> Wall Street's trading floors are decorated with photoshopped pictures of him cavorting with
> bodacious babes in various states of undress. Some people have even attributed the
> markets' mid-week bounce to glee over Mr Spitzer, rather than to the $200 billion shovelled
> their way by the Fed."

Xenfreude (where X = a politician's name) is hardly a new innovation.
See my Language Log post mentioning Bushenfreude, Deanenfreude,
Frankenfreude, etc.:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003994.html

And Mark Liberman's more recent post on Huckenfreude, Mittenfreude,
Obamenfreude, etc.:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005296.html

And finally on the popularity of the word "schadenfreude", see my
OUPblog post from last year:

http://blog.oup.com/2007/09/schadenfreude/
.

--Ben Zimmer

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