It's like those Germans have a word for everything

For whatever reason, the German language developed some lengthy, difficult-to-pronounce words that seem to be "just right" for some specific situations (and English has often just swiped the words and folded them into our vocabulary). English often uses such "loaned words" from other languages, adding richness but also confusion.

One that causes some head-scratching when we run across it is Götterdämmerung, which literally means "twilight of the gods." Figuratively, the term is extended to situations of world-altering destruction marked by extreme chaos and violence. The word originated in the Old Norse Ragnarök, more widely known thanks to Marvel movies.

As writers, we need to use this sort of word with care. My guess is that a large percentage of readers would have to look the term up and that annoys many people so much that they simply stop reading at that point.

A good rule of thumb is that if we have to include a paragraph defining a term that is not in common usage by most of our readers, why bother? Some German words are so common that we don't give them a second thought, of course. Kindergarten, angst, and sauerkraut come to mind. I like "zeitgeist," -- literally "spirit of the time" -- but I'm not sure most readers regularly use the term... so beware.

One German word that has become more and more part of the standard vocabulary of educated Americans is schadenfreude, literally schaden = damage  + freude = joy. The pandemic has provided many opportunities for fully boosted people to use the term.

Here is a paragraph from a commentary written by Father James Martin, a Jesuit priest, from the Jan. 31 NYT:

There are several possible theories of how humans evolved a tendency to feel schadenfreude, the German term for the joy one takes in another’s misfortune. Perhaps our cave-dwelling forebears felt something similar when they saw an enemy get too close to a saber-tooth tiger, despite repeated warnings, and end up as an afternoon snack. “That’s what you get, Og!”

Father Martin's reference to evolution makes sense. After all, potential ancestors who tended to put themselves in life-threatening situations often did not pass on their genes, though Nature does not feel joy or sadness about that. 

Martin urges us to both accept the emotion of schadenfreude we might feel, as when we read about a vaccine denier dying of the virus, but not to revel in it. He calls such reveling "mean" and not very adult behavior.

Schadenfreude is fun to say and much cooler than some English equivalent, like "to gloat" -- though gloat doesn't quite capture the passive nature of observing something bad happening to someone and feeling joy. 

I want to be like our Jesuit priest writer and be more mature. Most of us do.

But right now the best I can do is keep my immature joy to myself. 

The classic example we use in classrooms when explaining schadenfreude is our tendency to laugh when we see someone slip and fall on an icy sidewalk. "It wasn't me!" we think.

But someday it likely WILL be me. Pushing past that initial feeling of joy/relief seeing someone we don't like much slip on the ice is what leads us to empathy, and the world needs more of that.