A History Of Schadenfreude

Excerpt from Tiffany Watt Smith's Schadenfreude: The Joy of Another's Misfortune (Little, Brown and Company, 2018):

The Japanese have a saying: "The misfortunes of others taste like honey." The French speak of joie maligne, a diabolical delight in other people's suffering. The Danish talk of skadefryd, and the Dutch of leedvermaak. In Hebrew enjoying other people's catastrophes is simcha la\u2011ed, in Mandarin xìng\u2011z\u0101i\u2011lè\u2011huò, in Serbo-Croat it is zlùrad\u014dst and in Russian zloradstvo. More than 2,000 years ago, Romans spoke of malevolentia. Earlier still, the Greeks described epichairekakia (literally epi, over, chairo, rejoice, kakia, disgrace). "To see others…