epicaricacy

quoted in the guardian letters

*grins evilly* Shan't!

AAAAAGH! Take it back! Hurry, before someone else adds That Which Must Not Be Named!

*crossing fingers, lighting candles, rubbing rabbit's foot, all rather dexterously too*

What? Koani? No, say it isn't true! There is nothing... beautiful... about that, that, "word." Please, take it back!

Many thanks, seanahan!

That's how I pronounce it, Koani.

Am I right in thinking this word is pronounced epi-kari-ka-see? ^_^ I'm totally going to bust this one out in lieu of the overused but beautiful schadenfreude...

Oh, joy! I'm so happy for ALL of us! ;-)

A much better word than... you know. Finally I can reference the concept without speaking that which must never be spoken! ;-)

Epicaricacy is the English word for Schadenfreude. I first found this word in Novobatzky and Shea's "Depraved and Insulting English." Ammon Shea then came to our discussion board (Wordcraft) to explain his citation: "To the best of my knowledge the word first appeared in Nathaniel Bailey's Universal Etymological English Dictionary. I think that the first edition was published in 1727 and it went through 20 or 22 subsequent editions. He spells the word differently and defines it thusly: Epicharikaky - A joy at the misfortunes of others. The etymology is from the Greek epi (upon) + chara (joy) + kakon (evil). I have seen it in a number of other books with what appears to be the modernized spelling. I can't remember all of these sources off the top of my head but aside of Mrs. Byrnes it also appears in a book of obscure words by Paul Dickson. I think Joseph Shipley may have it in his Dictionary of Early English.
I'm hardly a scholar in such matters but I would say that the words in Bailey's Dictionary are rarely hapax, imaginary or inkhorns. Although he compiled his dictionary shortly after the inkhorn craze of Phillips, Blount and Bullokar he seems to have taken a somewhat more grounded approach to compiling his word list and would see no reason to doubt the authenticity of the word."

Currently, there are 797 Google hits for "epicaricacy," and it is cited in the following online dictionaries, cited by Onelook: Wikipedia, Worthless Word for the Day, Wiktionary, and Luciferous Logolepsy. On Wordcraft alone we've mentioned it 256 times.

No one is sure why it never was printed in the OED, though skeptics say that it was a mistake in Bailey's.

It's my favorite word!