Mine is that at my age (barely made it into Gen Z on the old end) I just found out today that a Bo Weevil is an insect (beetle) and not some kind of mole or similar rodent.
Envy is wanting something someone else has. Jealousy is fearing someone will take away something you have. Or I’m about to learn that what I’ve recently learnt is not true and then this would be my answer for this post.
This is correct! Majority of the time when someone says they’re jealous of something they absolutely mean envious. E.g. “You’re going for a holiday next week? I’m so jealous.” Nope. Envious.
Majority of the time when someone says they’re jealous of something they absolutely mean envious.
Isn’t this how language works ? If majority of the time people use the word in certain way, than that becomes one of its accepted meanings. In fact dictionaries list one of the meanings of “jealous” to be “envious” (with citations of this usage going back to 14th century, including works by Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain that are over 100 years old)
While obviously you’re correct, this is not necessarily a good thing. The jealousy-envy collapse is clearly an impoverishment of language. These are two different concepts and it’s useful to have words for concepts.
FWIW: the doctrine that “whatever people say is by definition correct and wise” is actually a pretty Anglocentric and modern thing. Linguists didn’t always think this, and you won’t get people saying this for French, for example.
