envy

Latin invidere — to look upon with envy — combines in- (upon) and videre (to see). To envy was literally to look ill-willed at someone. The evil eye — oculus malus, mauvais oeil — was the corollary: the envious look was believed to cause harm. From Roman antiquity through the Middle Ages, envy was understood as a visual phenomenon: the looking itself was dangerous.

The noun invidia — envy — was one of the seven deadly sins in Christian moral theology. Thomas Aquinas defined invidia in the 13th century as 'sadness over another's good' — a precise formulation. The deadly sin was not wanting what others have but being saddened by their having it. The sin was in the sorrow, not the desire.

In English, envy and jealousy have been partially synonymous for centuries — both languages of resentment toward what others have. The 18th and 19th centuries worked to distinguish them: jealousy as the fear of losing what you have; envy as wanting what you don't. The distinction is not fully stable in common usage even now.

Psychologists distinguish malicious envy (wanting another's advantage while wanting to destroy it) from benign envy (wanting another's advantage while being motivated to achieve it yourself). The latter functions as a spur to ambition. The Dutch word for benign envy — gunnen — means wishing someone their good fortune; English has no equivalent, suggesting what the culture privileges.