Jealousy and Envy

Jealousy and envy are two words with the similar meaning. Dictionaries define jealousy with the help of envy and vice-versa. To make this clear a closer examination can reveal certain differences in meaning with the help of examples.

The Oxford Student's Learners Dictionary defines envy as: "the feeling of annoyance or anger mixed with admiration when one wishes to have the same ability, achievement, luck etc. as another person". Jealousy is defined in the same dictionary as: "an instance, example of feeling jealous; a jealous attitude or disposition". The words envy and jealousy are often used interchangeably, but in correct usage, both words stand for two different distinct emotions. These emotions sometimes associated with or connected to different colours. Yellow and green often mean jealousy but in some cases green can mean envy as in "Tom is green with envy that I beat him at table tennis". These are the connotative meanings, but dictionaries mainly deal with the denotative meanings of words.

We can express negative or angry thoughts, feelings, and behaviours of insecurity and anxiety by jealousy that occur when you believe a valued relationship is being threatened by a rival. For example it can be said: "She was overcome with jealousy when she saw her boyfriend laughing with another woman.". While envy means the pain or frustration caused by others having something that you does not have yourself for example love, happiness: "I really envy you and Ian, you seem so happy together". In these two examples jealousy and envy are similar, they differ in that jealousy concerns with love one has and is afraid of losing, while envy concerns with happiness that one does not have and either he wants to acquire, or prevent others from getting it.

Jealousy refers to anger or sadness about some type of advantage perceived by a colleague, it can be said: "She was eaten up with jealous when she heard that he had been given a promotion". By envy we can express wishes about possessions, abilities that someone else has, a resentful dislike about something that we does not have: "She has a lifestyle which most people would envy".

When we refer to a feeling of unhappiness and anger about unimportant things we can use jealousy like this: "The team has performed very badly this season due to petty jealousies among the players". While envy can