ABSTRACT

THE GERMANS HAVE COINED A WORD FOR PLEASURE IN THE MISFORTUNES of other people: Schadenfreude. The idea of such pleasure horrified R.C. Trench, whom the Oxford English Dictionary identifies as the first person to use the word Schadenfreude in English. Trench, an English archbishop, concluded in 1852 that the very availability of a word for “the joy of another’s injury” would taint all of a culture that relied on that language. It was as though all German speakers carried an infection, just by virtue of their linguistic resources. Trench worried that the infection might spread to English speakers.