О значении и различии английских слов «Jealous» и «Envious»

В чём различие английских прилагательных «Jealous» и «Envious»? Можно ли использовать в своей разговорной английской речи только одно из этих слов? О значении и тонкостях употребления «Jealous» и «Envious» в своей статье расскажет Иен.

Hello, everyone! Today I want to talk about the words «jealous» and «envious». These two words cause a lot of confusion for many, even most native speakers.

The word «jealous» is defined as the fear that someone will take something away from you, usually relating to relationships. The word «envious» means that you want something that someone else has. Let’s look at some examples!

JEALOUS
I’m very jealous over my boyfriend. He’s mine!
I’m jealous of that guy. You text him way to much!

ENVIOUS
Woah, your car is so nice! I’m envious.
I envy whoever wins the lottery this month.

But, there is something you must know about the two words. Most native speakers use the word «jealous» in a place of both of these words! Many of us don’t use the word «envious» at all!

Therefore, «I’m jealous of your car» and «I’m envious of your car» become basically the same sentence. But using «jealousy» and «envy» in the right places will make you seem very intelligent and fluent in English. So I recommend learning the difference.

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What Is Jealousy

QUESTION: What Is Jealousy?

What is jealousy? According to Webster’s dictionary, jealousy is described as «the state of being jealous.» In order to unravel the circular reasoning we must discover what jealous means. Jealous is a resentful envy as of someone’s success, achievements, advantages, etc.

Envy and jealousy are closely related, however a connotation difference exists. To quote Webster, «Envy denotes a longing to possess something awarded to or achieved by another. . .Jealousy, on the other hand, denotes a feeling of resentment that another has gained something that one more rightfully deserves. Jealousy also refers to anguish caused by fear of losing someone or something to a rival.»

As you may have gathered from the above explanations, jealousy can be unhealthy or healthy, depending on your motivation. Unhealthy jealousy stems from fear, insecurity, deception, or covetousness. When you feel yourself acting out in jealousy, you need to examine the reason why you feel jealous.

Does a threat truly exist or is your perception off base? When you are battling insecurity, another person’s achievements may come across to you as a threat. For example, a co-worker gets a raise for putting in extra hours on an important subject. Instead of being thrilled for him, you feel jealous even though you did not put the same hours in. You take his promotion as a personal reflection on you.

Next time you feel the angst of jealousy creep into your chest stop, think, and discern the source of jealousy. Once you discover why you are jealous you need to deal with the issue.

Jealousy is not all bad. A healthy jealousy needs to be developed in family relationships. This type of jealousy is a protective fight to maintain your relationships. Would you sit by while a person seduces your spouse or deceives your child? No, you would fight for them. You would do all you could to declare truth.

God demonstrates protective jealousy in a similar way. Exodus 34:14 gives insight to the nature of God: «Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.» Our allegiance belongs to God alone. He is zealous to bring each human being into a rejuvenating relationship with Him. His protective jealousy is a wondrous comfort to those who believe and honor Christ as the ultimate authority.

We have all sinned and deserve God’s judgment. God, the Father, sent His only Son to satisfy that judgment for those who believe in Him. Jesus, the creator and eternal Son of God, who lived a sinless life, loves us so much that He died for our sins, taking the punishment that we deserve, was buried, and rose from the dead according to the Bible. If you truly believe and trust this in your heart, receiving Jesus alone as your Savior, declaring, «Jesus is Lord,» you will be saved from judgment and spend eternity with God in heaven.

How to Deal with Jealousy in Relationships

Jealousy makes us paranoid that our friends and partners will abandon us, disturbing our relationships and causing us to completely lose peace of mind. The more jealous and possessive we are, the more we drive others away. Realizing that we all have the capacity to love an enormous number of people and things helps us to overcome jealousy. Having love for our friends, professions, sport and so on does not diminish either our partner’s love for us or ours for them; in fact, it enriches it.

Jealousy vs Envy

Jealousy can take several forms. If we’re single and feel jealous of a couple or attracted to someone who’s already in a relationship, it’s actually envy. We wish we could receive the person’s affection and attention instead, or we wish that we could have such a loving relationship. In both cases, we’re envious about something we lack, and this can bring up feelings of inadequacy and other self-esteem issues.

Jealousy in Relationships

Jealousy when we’re in a relationship can be even more disturbing. Rather than focusing on what another person has, it focuses on our partner or friend and a third person; we’re usually scared that we will lose our special relationship to the third person. We become intolerant of any rivalry or of possible unfaithfulness. For example, we feel jealous if our partner spends a lot of time with their own friends or attends events without us. Even a dog feels this type of jealousy when a new baby arrives in the house. This form of jealousy contains elements of resentment and hostility in addition to strong elements of insecurity and mistrust.

If we’re insecure, then whenever our partner or friend is with other people, we start to feel jealous. This is because we’re unsure of our own self-worth, and insecure about the other person’s love for us, leading us to not trust our partner. We fear that we’ll be abandoned. It’s possible to have this fear even if our partner or friend doesn’t spend time with anyone else at all. With extreme possessiveness, we’re paranoid that they could leave us any moment.

Overcoming Jealousy

To deal with jealousy, we need to reflect on how the heart has the capacity to love everyone – this is one aspect of our Buddha-nature. When we reaffirm this fact, it helps us to overcome jealousy by seeing that loving one person does not exclude loving others. Just think about ourselves and how we can open our own hearts to so many people and things. [See: What Is Love?] With open hearts, we have love for our partner, friends, children, pets, parents, country, nature, God, hobbies and so on. There’s room in our hearts for all of them because love is not exclusive. We’re perfectly capable of dealing with and relating to all these objects of our love, expressing our feelings in manners appropriate to each object. Of course, we don’t express our love and affection to our dog in the same way as we express it to our wife or husband or parents!

If we ourselves can have an open heart, so can our partner or friend. Everyone’s heart has the same capacity to extend love to an enormous number of people and things – even to the entire world. It’s unfair and unrealistic to expect and even demand that they have love only for us and never have other loving friendships or outside interests. Do we think so little of them that we feel they have no room in their hearts for both us and other people? Do we really want to deprive them of realizing their Buddha-nature capacities of love and, consequently, some of the greatest joys in life?

Here, we’re not talking about sexual infidelity. The issues of monogamy and sexual unfaithfulness are extremely complex and bring in many further issues. In any case, if our sexual partners, especially our marital spouses, are unfaithful or spend a great deal of time with others – especially when we have young children together – jealousy, resentment, and possessiveness are never helpful emotional responses. We need to deal with the situation in a sober manner, because yelling at our partners or trying to make them feel guilty hardly ever succeeds in making them love us.

Opening Our Hearts to Love

When we think that close loving friendships can only be with one person exclusively, we feel that there’s only one person – our partner or friend – whose love matters. Even if there are many others who love us, we tend to ignore that fact and think, “That doesn’t count.” Continually opening our hearts to as many others as possible and acknowledging the love that others – friends, relatives, pets, and so on – have for us now, have had in the past, and will have in the future helps us to feel more emotionally secure. This, in turn, helps us to overcome any fixation we may have on anyone being a special object of love.

Omniscience and all-loving both imply having everyone in our minds and hearts. Nevertheless, when a Buddha is focused on or with only one person, he or she is 100% concentrated on that person. Therefore, having love for everyone does not mean that love for each individual is diluted. We need not fear that if we open our hearts to many people, our personal relations will be less intense or fulfilling. We may cling less and be less dependent on any one relation to be all-satisfying, and we may spend less time with each individual, but each is a full involvement. The same is true in terms of others’ love for us when we’re jealous that it will be diluted because they also have loving friendships with others.

It’s unrealistic to think that any one person will be our perfect match, our “other half,” who will complement us in all ways and with whom we can share every aspect of our lives. Such ideas are based on the ancient Greek myth told by Plato that originally we were all wholes, who were split in two. Somewhere “out there” is our other half; and true love is when we find and reunite with our other halves. Although this myth became the foundation for Western romanticism, it does not refer to reality. To believe in it is like believing in the handsome prince who will come to rescue us on a white horse. We need loving friendships with many people in order to share all our interests and needs. If this is true of us, then it is also true of our partner and friends. It’s impossible for us to fulfill all their needs and so they too need other friendships.

Summary

When someone new comes into our lives, it is helpful to view them like a beautiful wild bird that has come to our window. If we are jealous that the bird also goes to other people’s windows so lock it up in a cage, it becomes so miserable that it’ll lose its luster and might even die. If, without possessiveness, we let the bird fly free, we can enjoy the wonderful time that the bird is with us. When the bird flies off, as is it’s right, it will be more apt to return if it feels safe with us. If we accept and respect that everyone has the right to have many close friendships, including ourselves, our relationships will be healthier and more long-lasting.

What your jealous feelings are telling you (and what you should do about them)

At one time or another, we’ve probably all felt the twinge of the green-eyed monster. Is my boyfriend’s banter with his attractive, known-each-other-since-kindergarten best friend more than that of “just friends”? Does my boss think more of the other junior associate than of me? Why did my best friend invite her to the movies, but not me?

Jealousy is the emotion we feel when we feel fearful of losing someone or a relationship that is very important to us, Robin Stern, PhD, associate director for the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, tells NBC News BETTER.

Maybe we start to fear a relationship is becoming less sacred in the other person’s eyes. Maybe we fear that someone else is going to take away a connection we have with someone else, says Stern, who is also a licensed psychoanalyst who has treated individuals and couples for 30 years. “It’s that ‘I might lose you in some way’ feeling.”

Jealousy is often used somewhat interchangeably with the word “envy.” Stern says the two are different in that envy is about things or a situation or position (someone else has something you want); whereas jealousy is about people (you perceive someone else’s closeness with a friend or lover to be threatening your relationships with that person). You might be envious of a neighbor’s new car or a colleague’s promotion, whereas you feel jealous if you find out your best friend confided in another friend instead of you.

Sometimes feeling a twinge of jealousy is a sign there’s something you need to work on in a relationship or some aspect of that relationship isn’t going how you want it to be going. But, unchecked, consuming jealousy can be toxic and destroy relationships. That’s why we need to know how to recognize it and respond in a productive way, Stern and others say.

Jealous vs. Envious

While many people believe that jealous means fearing someone will take what you have, and envious means desiring what someone else has, historical usage shows that both mean «covetous» and are interchangeable when describing desiring someone else’s possessions. However, when referring to romantic feelings, only «jealous» can be used to mean «possessively suspicious,» as in «a jealous husband.»

Is there a difference between jealous and envious? That depends on who you ask. Some people have a view in this matter that is similar to that expressed by the noted lexicographic scholar, Homer Simpson: “I’m not jealous! I’m envious. Jealousy is when you worry someone will take what you have . envy is wanting what someone else has.” Others, however, do not make this distinction, or differentiate between these two words in another fashion. Let’s look at some of the ways that jealous and envious overlap.

Though ‘jealous’ and ‘envious’ may both mean «covetous,» only ‘jealous’ may be used to mean «possessively suspicious.»

Word Origins

Both words are fairly old, having been in regular use in English since the 13th century, and both words have accrued a number of shades of meaning over the years. The fact that each of these words has numerous meanings makes it somewhat impractical to say “jealous means X, and envious means Y.” But this matter of impracticality has proven to be little deterrent to many people who have insisted that each one of these words does indeed have a single true sense.

Here are some of the comments offered on these two words, taken from usage guides published since the middle of the 20th century:

One might almost say that these two words are used as if they were interchangeable . The words are scarcely synonymous, however. Envy means discontented longing for someone else’s advantages. Jealousy means unpleasant suspicion, or apprehension of rivalship.
—Theodore M. Bernstein, The Careful Writer, 1965

There are three different ways in which jealous can be used. The most common is . where the meaning is “fearful of losing attention.” Another broad sense is “possessive” or “protective” . third usage is in the sense of “envious,” as of another person because of his or her belongings, abilities, or achievements.
—William and Mary Morris, Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage (2nd ed.), 1985

Jealousy is properly restricted to contexts involving emotional rivalry; envy is used more broadly of resentful contemplation of a more fortunate person.
—Bryan A. Garner, Garner’s Modern American Usage (3rd ed.), 2009

One begins to see what a muddle questions of usage may be when one contemplates the fact that all three of the above books are making pronouncements on the words jealousy (and jealous) and envy, all of which are in some way true, and all of which are also in some substantial way different from one another. There are indeed some semantic distinctions that may be made between these words, but it should also be noted that many educated people use them interchangeably.

Envy is most often used to refer to a covetous feeling toward another person’s attributes, possessions, or stature in life. Many people use jealous to mean the same thing. “I am envious of his good fortune” could be changed to “I am jealous of his good fortune” without substantially changing the meaning of the sentence for most people. So, jealous can be used for this sense of envious.

Jealousy and Romance

Jealous is also often encountered adjectivally to refer to some unwelcome feelings in a romantic vein, typically in which one harbors suspicion of infidelity or the possibility that one’s love will be stolen away. An important distinction here is that envious will not serve as a substitute for this use of jealous. “He was always a jealous husband” cannot be changed to “He was always an envious husband” without substantially changing the meaning of the sentence.

So while jealous may be used to mean both “covetous” and “possessively suspicious”, envious is only comfortable in the first of those two senses. Which of course raises the following question: given that jealous has more meanings than envious, does the word envious feel envious or jealous (or both) of its synonym’s greater semantic breadth?